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Tom Law 
Time flies. Wow, where did the summer go? The final week of the Saratoga Race Course meeting gets underway Wednesday – the lone six-day racing week of the season with the action stretching through Labor Day – and a 10- race card to dissect.
The race dubbed “The Midsummer Derby” celebrates a major milestone today at Saratoga Race Course and gives off the feel of another, slightly younger, marquee event run annual the first Saturday in May.
When rain forces races off the turf, Barclay Tagg isn’t usually the type to keep his horses in the race, often electing to scratch and wait for another spot. The trainer considered such a move with Highland Sky Wednesday after morning downpours left the turf in a bog and forced the $100,000 John’s Call Stakes to the sloppy main track.
Shug McGaughey stood in the winner’s circle after Sunday’s sixth at Saratoga Race Course with his navy jacket draped over his left arm while he looked on in admiration at Mrs. Danvers.
Travers Week kicks off with a 10-race card Wednesday that features the $100,000 John’s Call going long on the grass and the $75,000 Michael G. Walsh novice hurdle going even longer.
Blue, partly cloudy skies turned to gray and occasional raindrops fell as a front rolled in from the southwest when the field of eight 2-year-olds entered the paddock for Friday’s Skidmore Stakes. The threat of rain just before the 5 1/2-furlong turf stakes led NYRA to move post time for the feature up four minutes to 5:14 p.m. and the colts and geldings skipped the post parade and headed straight to the starting gate.
Late in the 2017 Saratoga season, John Morrison called it. Anyone who listened, or better yet read the Fasig-Tipton Little Guy Stable Tour in The Saratoga Special, was not caught off guard watching the final strides of Thursday’s $100,000 Union Avenue Stakes.
Carl Nafzger walked down Ludlow Street toward Madison Avenue and the Fasig-Tipton sales grounds the afternoon of Aug. 2 – not long after the 2019 Hall of Fame ceremony he attends every year as an inductee himself in 2008. A catalog from the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select sale in hand, Nafzger went to check out a few yearlings that afternoon before ending his annual Saratoga sojourn.
Late Sunday afternoon, trainer Mark Casse still hadn’t come down from the high of Got Stormy’s record-obliterating win in Saturday’s Grade 1 Fourstardave Handicap. Eyeinthesky further bolstered the stable’s weekend results winning the first running of the Galway Stakes.
