Flatter: We just experienced the best racing of 2024
I am loath to declare anything the -st ever. That kneejerk hyperbole is reserved for the deepest, lowest common denominator of social media. Or what TV personalities clinging to some vestige of relevance will say in order to feign perspective that is best left for other adults who are more than a decade removed from their proms.
Call me schlemiel, but I cannot get around the idea that last weekend’s racing was the best yet in 2024. See? I could not bring myself to saying it was the best ever. This is about as giddy as I get.
I must admit Saturday started well enough when I cashed with Cherie DeVaux’s 13-1 long shot Without Caution, who won the opener at Saratoga. It continued when I hit with Full Screen, Mark Casse’s 8-1 winner in the eighth. But even without the bias of profitable wagering, last weekend was about to have it all.
In between those upward movements on the ADW display, Idiomatic really got things rolling when she held off South Sudan. Sorry. I had the TV on two things at once Saturday. The champion older dirt female’s close call in the Molly Pitcher (G3) came around the same time as the daydream team was tipping off against a country that only came to exist 13 years ago.
Allow me, please, to veer off topic long enough to ask how a new country like South Sudan or Kosovo or Montenegro gets a flag and anthem and passports and government so quickly. Was there a contest? Is there a one-stop company that turns this key? Silliness aside, I really do wonder how that works.
Back to Idiomatic. Maybe close calls are a shipping-in-July-to-lower-class-races thing. Last year she needed to gut out a stretch duel with Classy Edition to win by a head as the 2-5 favorite in the Delaware Handicap (G2). Substitute Soul of an Angel and 1-9 odds, and the story was the same last weekend at Monmouth Park.
The close call and a springtime loss in the Ruffian (G2) did not prevent Idiomatic from winning her 2023 Eclipse Award. The same yet might be said of last month’s defeat in the Ogden Phipps (G1) and Saturday’s thrilling close call that had us horizontal bettors sweating out that single.
It was two hours later when the day got even better, and Dornoch said neigh to the naysayers. Damn the scratched-down Fountain of Youth (G2) and the losses in Kentucky. When he pulled off that déjà vu win over Mindframe in the Haskell (G1), I could not help but think trainer Danny Gargan should be sitting at a poker table, chomping on a cigar and laughing at all the chips piled up in front of him at the expense of the other players who went broke.
Dornoch’s win was as much affirmation as it was the next chapter in a page turner of a book. As a racing community we are experiencing the tale of the foal crop of 2021.
Which brings us to what happened about a half-hour later at Saratoga.
Thorpedo Anna may have conquered a puny field in a race that was Grade 1 in name and past reputation only, but her overcoming a clumsy start to win the Coaching Club American Oaks gave trainer Kenny McPeek every reason to let her run with the boys. The fact he has waited to commit the best 3-year-old filly in the country to the Travers (G1) only serves to further tantalize us racing fans.
“Right now, we’re undecided,” McPeek said. “We’re doing the research.”
That looks eerily familiar to what McPeek said at Saratoga last week after Anna’s tour de force. In fact, he actually uttered that quote a full 12 days after Swiss Skydiver won the COVID Kentucky Oaks (G1) in 2020. He waited until a final breeze a week out before he committed to the Preakness. Green signs on his barns tell us McPeek made a winning decision.
By the end of Saturday night, the now 3-for-3 filly Iscreamuscream beat the likes of previously undefeated Medoro in the San Clemente Handicap (G2) at Del Mar. That was like a nice port after a wonderful dinner.
Appetites being what they are, I will be immersing myself headfirst into the feedbag again this weekend. The Jim Dandy (G2) beckons Saturday with Sierra Leone and Fierceness, beaten favorites in two Triple Crown races, and Seize the Grey, who won a Triple Crown race without them. This one feels like it will be for Seize the Grey what the Haskell was for Dornoch.
All this sets up for the what could be the next version of the best weekend of racing in 2024. Making the broad case that a Friday afternoon is the start of a non-holiday weekend, Idiomatic will go again in the Personal Ensign (G1), and Dornoch, Thorpedo Anna and alumni from the Jim Dandy will line up the following day in the Travers.
Oh, I almost forgot. One of my biggest complaints about declarations of -st ever is they seldom say what the previous -st ever was. It would be like saying someone set a new world record without knowing what the old record was. Hindsight might be coloring this, but I would submit the old best of 2024 came March 30, when Thorpedo Anna, Fierceness, Forever Young and Muth won important tests at three different tracks.
With more than five months left in the year, something tells me last weekend will not stand as the best that racing had to offer. If there is a moral to this story, it is that Xweets are fungible. And so are columns. But definitely not good races.
Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.