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Tom Law 
Everything he’d done with horses prepared him for the moment, yet Michael Dilger was still blowing like he’d just went three-quarters himself in 12 on the Oklahoma. Deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in, deep breath out as he waited on the racetrack, eyes fixed on the big screen.
Chester Broman and Rodrigo Ubillo needed a rider. Ubillo was saddling his first starter of the newly minted Saratoga meeting so he didn’t have any immediate past successes to rely on.
Bill Mott was less than a day back from Dubai and needed to make a quick decision with Besilu Stable’s Tapicat. Not exactly a choice of the 11th hour, but a pretty quick one nonetheless.
No print edition of The Saratoga Special Monday, so our handicappers go online for the 10-race program at Saratoga Race Course, led by the Evan Shipman for New York-breds.
Little Jake Bucci was a lot like most toddlers-turned-preschoolers getting ready for those big days going off to school for the first time. With at least one minor exception.
The talent level of Authenticity is as simple as her name. It’s authentic, simple as that.
John Shirreffs was in need of a fresh start. A new beginning. A change of pace. Call it what you will. He just needed to do some of the same old someplace new.
Opening Day at Saratoga was a muggy affair as expected, but the crowd obliged Tom Durkin’s request to join him in saying “And they’re off, at Saratoga!” as the gates flew open to begin the first race of the season. The sweltering heat could do nothing to prevent spectators from getting chills through the day.
The easy and predictable question is which race Wise Dan will show up in now that he’s back on the scene of one of the biggest victories in his Horse of the Year campaign a year ago. An even bigger and more interesting question is whether he’ll continue to surprise the man who perhaps knows him best when he starts at Saratoga Race Course in 2013.
