Saturday Odds, Best Bets, And What Forte Has To Do To Beat Them All

This 154th running of the Travers has become the dagger point of the season in one way: It’s a rare enough event for any Travers to convene that season’s Belmont, Preakness and Derby winners. That’s happened exactly twice in the last forty years. It is not rare for a Triple Crown veteran to be beaten at the Spa — for instance, most famously, Triple Crown winner Secretariat — which is why the track and its splendid late-summer meeting is known far and wide under the cliche “graveyard of champions.”

But this afternoon’s feature is rarer still than those other Travers: Neither Derby winner Mage, Preakness winner National Treasure nor Belmont winner Arcangelo are the favorite. What this means for the still-amazingly-favored Forte is that the NYRA oddsmakers, still, believe that the man is the superior athlete.

His trainer Todd Pletcher and his formidable jockey, the Hall of Fame artist Irad Ortiz, unsurprisingly believe that as well, and we shall see as the windows open in the Adirondacks what the money thinks — which may, in classic Saratoga fashion, also surprise us. But before we get into the intricacies of this staggeringly fun combat that will occur as the starters slam the gate open late this afternoon, herewith, a refresher on the field. We will update the live odds all afternoon in this space until post time.

(Post Position, Horse, Jockey, Trainer, Morning Line)

1) Forte, Irad Ortiz, Jr., Todd A. Pletcher, 7-5

2) Arcangelo, Javier Castellano, Jena M. Antonucci, 5-2

3) Tapit Trice, Jose L. Ortiz, Todd A. Pletcher, 12-1

4) Mage, Luis Saez, Gustavo Delgado, 4-1

5) National Treasure, John R. Velazquez, Bob Baffert,8-1

6) Disarm, Joel Rosario, Steven M. Asmussen, 8-1

7) Scotland, Junior Alvarado, William I. Mott, 12-1

(Source: NYRA, 8/25/2023)

Amid the white-hot trackside chatter at the Spa is this golden handicapping nugget: All three trainers of the Triple-Crown race-winning rivals, Bob Baffert (National Treasure), Jena Antonucci (Arcangelo) and Gustavo Delgado (Mage) have pointedly noted that their champions have matured over the summer. What that means is this: Three-year-old Thoroughbreds are, still, adolescents. The colts are getting older and their bodies are changing. Ms. Antonucci in particular remarked that Arcangelo was putting on lots of muscle. Adolescents do that.

Here’s the hilariously dry Western cowboy Bob Baffert on his Preakness-winning charge as reported by the Daily Racing Form: “He’s a horse that can be a little bit high strung, I think maybe he needed a little bit more time. He’s been doing really well, starting to mature. I can tell he’s changed. I think he’s a better horse than (he was in) the Preakness, and he’s going to have to be a better horse.”

What Baffert meant was, National Treasure was going to have to be a better horse especially for this race. In general, thought, this “filling out” process is a fully natural one, both mentally and physically, occurring in horses getting north of three years old. It is, also, a mark of Forte’s lack of mental maturity and ‘track seasoning’ that Pletcher has added the blinkers for the Jim Dandy a few weeks back. But the maturing process also gives us a key as to why Saratoga, and the Travers in particular, tends to bring upsets. Horses mature at different rates and in vastly different ways so that even the vaunted Triple Crown contests cannot be counted on as ironclad proof of ability. This is part of what the NYRA oddsmakers are saying by keeping Mage, National Treasure and Arcangelo on their various steps of the morning-line ladder.