Picks for Sword Dancer, Forego, Amsterdam

A limited national stakes menu and the chance for heavy rain at Saratoga tamp down excitement for Saturday racing across North America. Take heart: We’re one week away from the Kentucky Derby and an avalanche of high-class racing in New York and Kentucky. As for this week, the So-Cal sprinters look as inscrutable as ever, so it’s a hard pass on the Pat O’Brien, while the Ontario Colleen at Woodbine has a short field. We’ll stick to (possibly) soggy Saratoga, instead.

Sword Dancer

I’m looking at this race through the lens of rain, and it really does look as of Thursday like this 1 1/2-mile fixture will be run over yielding or soft ground. That means Channel Maker can break a 10-race losing streak.

You have to dig deeper into his past performances to find it, but Channel Maker is (or was, at least) a wetturf specialist: From five starts over courses rated yielding or soft he has three wins, and the defeats came at distances short of his best, one with trouble. Channel Maker won the Bowling Green two summers ago over a wet Saratoga course and hit a career peak going this 1 1/2-mile trip on a soft Belmont course.

It doesn’t jump off the page, but it’s my strong belief Channel Maker needs 1 1/2 miles to show his best, and somehow he hasn’t gotten into a 1 1/2-mile race since the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Turf. He has been outquicked late going 1 1/4 and 1 3/8 miles in his last two races, but his Manhattan showed he remains capable of hitting the performance level needed to win this, and significant stretch trouble last out in the Bowling Green cost him third. Channel Maker still is his regular high-headed self, running like a horse who shouldn’t be as good as he is, but on a wet course, he can win his first Sword Dancer after two solid showings.

Forego

Whitmore can come close to his best going seven furlongs rather than six, and he has run well over wet tracks, but neither thing — wet tracks nor seven furlongs — is what he really wants. With a potentially tricky inside draw, Whitmore seems worth opposing, even if he is the best and most accomplished horse in the Forego.

Now, if Whitmore really were 7-2 at post time, or even drifted from there, you’d have to give consideration to banking on his class coming through. But if not Whitmore, the Forego, especially on a wet track, has the chance to throw up some chaos.

Two 4-year-olds, Complexity and Mind Control, ought to take some play. Complexity, who seems fragile, has been held back for his Grade 1 attempt since his early July comeback run, which was fairly strong, as have been the recent works available on video. Yet I still can’t trust him.

Mind Control has done much of his best work at Saratoga, winning a somewhat suspect renewal of the Grade 1 Allen Jerkens over this trip a year ago, and stepped back toward his best form last out in his second race this summer. But it’s the race prior that concerns, since Mind Control ran terribly while making his first start in the mud or slop. Rain has to be a concern.

I’ll give the nod to another, longerpriced 4-year-old — Win Win Win. He might not be good enough for this, but he might be, and the odds figure to justify the risk. It seemed clear during the 2019 Triple Crown season that Win Win Win would benefit from a turnback to sprints (preferably on dirt), which he only got in Complexity’s allowance win July 2. Win Win Win, with meaningful trouble early and late, ran just as well as Complexity that day and has come back with encouraging work. I’ll take him to mow them down in the mud.

Amsterdam

It’s really difficult not to see the Amsterdam melting down considering the number of truly fast-early entrants. I want no part of Liam’s Pride, who closed to win the Gold Fever in the slop, but will take some of Basin, the race’s other off-pace hope. All Basin did was win Grade 1 Hopeful on a wet track last summer at Saratoga, and he has looked well in his works since being moved to the Todd Pletcher barn — particularly matched with Dr Post on Aug. 14.