The delay before the eighth race Wednesday at Saratoga Race Course – a delay caused by a stricken filly scratched just prior to post time of the seventh – proved extra worrisome for Graham Motion.
Not because he’s a horseman who genuinely cares for the animals in his and others’ care.
That probably goes without saying.
And not because he was worried as he stood with owner Charlotte Weber as her Exchange Rate filly Hobe Wins circled, circled and circled some more around her designated tree in the paddock with the other 10 fillies and mares in that race.
It was Stars Above Me, waiting in the holding barn hundreds of yards away and not given the all clear to go to the paddock for the $100,000 Coronation Cup Stakes, that Motion was worried about. He didn’t know the filly too well, since she’d only been in his Saratoga barn for about two weeks, but he knew that she could be a bit wound up.
“I was actually more worried about this filly being in the holding barn, waiting to come over and wondering how she was behaving,” Motion said. “She’s a little tightly wound. She’s a filly that wants to run five-eighths on the grass so she’s tightly wound anyway. She handled it very well.”
To read the rest of the Coronation Cup recap, download Thursday’s digital edition of The Saratoga Special presented by Keeneland Sales.
