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Tom Law 
Just like the parrot who repeats everyday sayings from the barn in his cage that hangs about 10 yards from her stall, Mitch Friedman hopes Carameaway repeats her performance from a year ago in Monday’s $100,000 Saratoga Dew Stakes at Saratoga Race Course.
John Kimmel watched a few breezers on the Oklahoma Training Track’s turf course Friday morning, hopped in his golf cart, drove back across Union Avenue to his four small and secluded barns in the northeast corner of the stable area along Union Avenue, talked about a couple horses with longtime assistant Loretta Lusteg and some of his grooms and took a deep breath.
Exaggerator made the cross-country trip from Southern California by plane and road to run in today’s $200,000 Saratoga Special Stakes at Saratoga Race Course.
Carlos Martin was on one end of the shank, a good looking dark bay gelding on the other on a quiet Monday morning in the barn area next to the far turn on the Saratoga Race Course main track.
Two turf mile races, including the Grade 2 Fourstardave, plus an allowance and wide-open claimer on the dirt make up the Saturday $500,000 guaranteed pick four at Saratoga Race Course. We were close to cashing the ticket last week, but Honor Code caught Liam’s Map in the final strides of the Grade 1 Whitney Invitational. No time to sulk. Back to work.
Most of the usual suspects and familiar faces were combing the sales grounds Friday in advance of today’s start to the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga New York-bred yearling sale along with one man who is recognizable to just about every sports fan in America.
Laurence Leavy, better known as Marlins Man and known for being at just about every major sporting event in the country, was in and out of the Fasig-Tipton barn area before heading up to Saratoga Race Course for the last few races Friday. He’s always in the front row at games, perfectly centered for the television- and still-camera shots.
Jena Antonucci isn’t afraid to take on what she calls “project horses.” She readily admits that many of the 30-plus horses split between Barn 73 at the Oklahoma Training Track and at Florida’s Gulfstream Park.
Don’t expect a modern-day version of Paul Revere with calls for “the Venezuelans are coming, the Venezuelans are coming” to ring out at racetracks and sales grounds around the U.S. anytime soon, but owners with deep pockets and skilled horsemen from that troubled nation will be showing up more and more in the coming months.
Pat Costello expected good things when he showed up at the Fasig-Tipton Sales Paddocks Tuesday night.
He knew Hip 168, a colt by Street Cry from a repeatedly proven graded stakes producing family, was on the short lists of most of the major players in town for the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of selected yearlings. He’d seen them look at the colt, come back for a second look, sometimes a third, and he’d seen the veterinarians come do their job to either give the thumbs up or thumbs down to their clients.
Phil Serpe’s 18 horses at Saratoga are sound and ready to run. Him? Not so much. And he’s got the boot on his right leg to show for it.
The short answer is he strained his achilles tendon sheath, which sounds like something a horse would do, while working out this winter in Florida. The long answer involves tripping over a crossbar in the door of his barn at Belmont Park, falling to the asphalt and fracturing both elbows.
