Horse Racing: Horse auditions held for Travers Stakes
The Travers Stakes is scheduled to take place on the 28th of August at Saratoga Springs in New York. It is considered the most important race of the season and will be run for the 141st time this year. The race has a purse of 1 million dollars.
Due to the significance of this particular event, auditions are being carried out as to which colts will be participating in the Stakes. It is causing all sorts of problems, particularly for the 3-year old race horses since they are the ones who are being auditioned the most.
One of the most talented race horses, Lookin at Lucky has qualified for the Travers. The horse has the potential to be a part of such a big meet and in the near past has shown brilliant performances in the Haskell Stakes where he was the winner of the race. In the Preakness Stakes he also performed well but his run was not as bold as it was in the Haskell. The horse has always shown versatility in his runs.
The situation at the moment is like Travers is a big budget movie for which the best actors in the town are being auditioned. As for A Little Warm, the sports experts think that he deserves a role in the play since the horse has shown depth and range by winning consecutive races, including the Jim Dandy Stakes. A Little Warm is a 7-2 favourite to win Travers Stakes. Tony Dutrow, the trainer of the horse, said he feels absolutely satisfied with the way A Little Warm qualified for the Travers Stakes. He truly appreciates the ability of his horse. In the Louisiana Derby, the colt displayed his talent and finished in second place. That is when the race horse was no more known as a sprinter since he showed a dramatic improvement in his performance. One of the other races of A Little Warm where he ran amazingly was the recent Jim Dandy Stakes. In this particular meet, the horse maintained a lively speed and then drew clearly in the stretch. The way he ran in the Jim Dandy Stakes was a reflection of the colt’s play at the Delaware Park where A Little Warm won for the first time around the two turns.
A number of trainers and fans are of the view that A Little Warm can do a better job than Lookin at Lucky. A Little Warm’s victory at Delaware can be partly contributed to the nature of the track which was favourable for the horses, who had an inclination towards maintaining a very fast pace in the beginning of the race. The horses with this sort of disposition won all the events except one on the day of Delaware.
The situation was almost identical in the Jim Dandy Stakes, where A Little Warm was again showed an ability to take an early lead. Miner’s Reserve, one of A Little Warm’s competitors, and A Little Warm both ran on the track 1-2 in Delaware and the Jim Dandy Stakes, interchanging the spots just in the stretch.
From observations of these two races, critics question if the race horse is actually talented or if it is just a matter of luck that he has won the aforementioned races.
Much criticism from trainers and fans has been heard on the auditioning of the race horse Super Saver. The colt is the winner of the prestigious Kentucky Derby, and thus should not have been subjected to selection pressures, experts say.
The trainer of Super Saver, Todd Pletcher said that the colt was lucky in the Kentucky Derby and he was able to make use of it. In the Preakness Stakes the horse managed to finish in eighth place while in the Haskell Stakes, Super Saver was the fourth place finisher.
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