Tom Law

Jose Ortiz recalled his conversation with Chad Brown about an unraced first-time starter by Tapit when he arrived in the paddock before the last race at Keeneland April 20, ready for the finale on one of many raw afternoons in the Bluegrass this year.

Evelyn Benoit made a deal with Jose Camejo a couple years back.

Week 3 of the Saratoga Race Course meeting begins Wednesday with a 10-race card that features the Grade 2 Honorable Miss Handicap and a big field for the $75,000 Jonathan Kiser Novice hurdle stakes.

Minutes before the start of Friday’s fifth race, infield tote boards and television screens throughout Saratoga Race Course dimmed. In a break from the usual display of odds, will-pays and statistics, the monitors instead presented a photo of a beaming Marylou Whitney on a black backdrop with the text “1925 – 2019” underneath.

Jeremiah Englehart sensed that something – maybe a sudden movement, sound, anything – might unhinge an otherwise “kind” filly halfway through saddling before Thursday’s $100,000 Stillwater Stakes at Saratoga Race Course.

Saratoga Race Course sprang to life last week – the track’s earliest Opening Day since the late 1800s – and the action continues with Week 2 starting Wednesday with a 10-race card featuring the first steeplechase of the season and the Rick Violette Stakes.

Mark Casse was absent from the paddock to saddle Fetching in the sixth race Sunday at Saratoga Race Course as the trainer was glued to a TV monitor to watch 2-year-old Capture The Genie break her maiden at Gulfstream Park at 3:57 p.m. At 4:05, Casse doubled up on the day as Fetching scored in the 1 1/8-mile turf allowance.

About an hour before the horses entered the starting gate for the Coronation Cup Stakes Sunday at Saratoga, owner Richard Klein enjoyed time with friends outside Shake Shack near the paddock. Klein felt a tickling at the top of his head and reaching for its source, found a ladybug had landed on him.

The task that faced the two would-be upsetter of Chad Brown’s four-cornered entry in Saturday’s Diana Stakes looked difficult at best.

Alarm clocks buzzed, rang, blared and dinged early today in upstate New York, ushering in the earliest start to the Saratoga Race Course meeting in well over a century.