Sunday’s (7-30-2017) Power Page and PLUS for Saratoga and Del Mar are ready for download…

Good Samaritan, one of the best 3 year old Turf colts, in a season of very good turf colts, defeated Always Dreaming and the other main Track colts in the Jim Dandy.   We might have a real shift in this division starting right now!  It wasn’t close!

By the end of the season, as Tapwrit and Irish War Cry and others mature, this group could be a “horse of a different color” by Breeders’ Cup time…  This is starting to get real interesting…

July 30, 2017                                                  Handicapped for:   FAST / FIRM

 
The Haskell at Monmouth

Race #12

 2 BATTLE OF MID (m)  78.3*   Starting to get very good, in sync. 

                                                       

   MCCRAKEN      ( )  78.0*   Early leader of pack, hitting stride, a threat.

      

   TIMELINE      (p)  77.8    Coming of age, off New Life TOP, hard to repeat

                                                          

 1 IRISH WAR CRY ( )  77.8    Company up front, makes this a little tough.

                                                          

   GIRVIN        ( )  77.5    Chance to show his stuff, better than KD…   

                                                       

   PRACTICAL JOK (p)  76.8    Still not hitting Grade 1 figs.    

                                                     

   HENCE         ( )  75.0    Rank outsider to me…

 

To my eye, Battle of Midway is about to run the kind of race that will impress. With a form cycle that shows incremental improvement, with him always getting good enough to “class-up” to any competion.  Hisreturn to the races after his very decent KD, was a beautiful and easy effort that should set him up to “explode” today.

 

While I am also really interested to see if McCraken will fulfill the early promise of his races in the G-2 race of Nov 26-2016 at Churchill and then is magnificent race at Tampa Bay Downs on Feb 11-2017. These were both high class effort and the kind of figs we would associate with a potential champion.  He’s had some mis-steps, but this would vault him and this class way up.

 

This is easily the most interesting Haskell from a handicapping perspective as 6 of these 7 runners have some reasonable chance to win… and I argue with anyone who sees it differently… This is a good one!