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Showing no signs of being slowed from the after effects of surgery to remove a kidney stone earlier in the meet, Dallas Stewart bounces from his barn on the Oklahoma Training Track to watch training on the main track.
Sometimes he walks, other times he takes a golf cart. He’ll go to the Oklahoma, too, and Wednesday morning he was getting entries set for the weekend.
The horses are ready for him, and stand tied to the back wall as Christophe Clement hustles in and out of stalls, speaking in French (maybe Spanish) to grooms and checking legs. It’s mid-morning and between sets and Clement hesitates when questioned about a stable tour.
Honor Code made Shug McGaughey’s meet when he won the Whitney Invitational Aug. 8. Paced by the Grade 1, the stable produced six wins through Saturday’s card. Honor Code is waiting for Belmont Park in the fall but McGaughey has plenty of ammunition from his barn at the Oklahoma Training Track and another at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland.
On any given morning, if Joe Sharp isn’t at the barn he’s probably on the track galloping one of the nearly 40 horses in his string at Saratoga Race Course. That was the case earlier in the meeting when The Saratoga Special’s Annise Montplaisir caught up with him for a stable tour. Sharp was just heading to the track on Dolphus, a 2-year-old half-brother to Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra.
A majority of the horses in the stable of 49-year-old Charlton Baker are New York-breds, including Moonlight Song, winner of the John Morrissey Stakes earlier in the meet for owner Albert Fried Jr. He won two races from 10 starters heading into today’s card, the same number of winners he posted in 2014 and 2013.
George Weaver eats a clementine, pats his dog on the head and begins to walk down his shedrow in Horse Haven.
Weaver trained his first winner in 2001, his stable has earned at least $1 million every year since. With 38 winners this year, he has already gone past $2 million in earnings and has a chance to eclipse his best season, when he won 50 races for $2.6 million in 2014.
Funny Cide doesn’t walk the shedrow or even reluctantly hang out in the pony stall anymore. Jersey Town is a stallion. Sky Blazer was retired and his stall is empty. Confrontation got sold to Dubai.
Asked to do a Stable Tour, Rick Schosberg, didn’t hesitate, turning at his tack room door and walking, “Let’s do that.”
Schosberg started at the first stall and walked the length of the shedrow, talking about his Saratoga string and a few horses at Belmont Park.
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.
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.
