Saratoga 2022: Return of the 1-mile chute ... and how to bet it

Ahead of opening day at Saratoga, everything is going according to plan. The master plan of 1902, that is.

When post time comes Thursday for the Wilton Stakes, a field of nine 3-year-old fillies will go one mile, a distance that has not been raced on the main track at Saratoga in 30 years.

In 1992, races were held at the distance, but not according to the master plan. There was no chute that year. Officials simply angled a gate along the outside fence of a widened first turn, giving a substantial advantage to horses breaking from the inside posts. That experiment was short-lived.

This time it will be different. The historic Wilson Chute has been reconstructed.

Click here to see Saratoga entries for opening week.

It worked until 1972, but still there is uncertainty and hesitation on behalf of jockeys, trainers and handicappers alike. The central questions around the Wilson Chute’s success include safety for the horses and jockeys who will have to run across the gap and transfer their gate speed immediately into a turn, post position biases that could play out and another handicapping uncertainty for bettors.

What happened to the original? Simple. The automobile. A detail not fully taken into consideration in the 1902 master plan. For 70 years dirt races were run out of the Wilson Chute, but in 1972 it was dismantled to put up a parking lot. (Could this have been the paradise that would be lost in Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”?)

Portions of the 158-year-old track have been built and rebuilt before. At the end of the 19th century Saratoga was struggling to stay open. But a man named, you guessed it, Richard Wilson Jr. led an effort to buy the track and return it to its glory.

In 1902 the master plan developed by civil engineer Charles W. Leavitt Jr. was rolled out. Along with building a new paddock, the grandstand was disassembled and rebuilt around a new track that had two chutes – one for seven-furlong contests and the other for one-mile races from an extension of the clubhouse turn into the spectator area.The same as it ever was, the reconstructed Wilson Chute enters the main track halfway through the clubhouse turn, creating an abbreviated first turn. Saratoga’s main track is 1 1/8 miles. Without a chute, any one-mile race would begin in the first turn, which immediately compromises inside post positions. Thus the long hiatus.

Beside the dirt races that are written to go one mile, the chute also will be used when one-mile or 1 1/16-mile turf races are moved to the main track. Horsemen will find out whether their runners can go 1 1/2 turns.

To minimize potential trouble crossing the gap of the track and finding position on the turn, the New York Racing Association is recommending field sizes be capped at 10. Saratoga will employ a 14-horse gate, allowing horses to be loaded farther out from the inside rail.

However, jockeys won’t commit to the 10-horse limit until they feel confident their safety isn’t compromised. A test run was conducted Tuesday morning with John Velázquez, Irad Ortiz Jr., José Ortiz, Javier Castellano, Manny Franco and Declan Carroll aboard horses. The consensus?

“With six horses it’s not the same as the afternoon at race time,” Irad Ortiz Jr. told Horse Racing Nation in summing up their reactions. “It’s different, because everybody will try to get a position. You’d like to be close or be wherever your trainer wants you to be. This morning wasn’t that bad. I think it’s going to be a little more tight, but it was OK. We made the turn really good. It looks pretty good. Honestly, I think we can make it with around 8-10 horses in that chute. We should be all right.”

Many handicappers are wondering how to put their money behind this new unknown. Could post position significantly affect the outcome of races run from the Wilson Chute? HRN’s Ed DeRosa offered a point of comparison. Ellis Park has an identical half-chute setup to begin mile runs.

De Rosa’s conclusion: “I wouldn’t let post affect my selection.”

There are 11 races at one mile in Saratoga’s first condition book, beginning with Thursday’s Wilton Stakes, one of three stakes to be run out of the chute. The Wilton attracted a competitive field of fillies, including three from trainer Todd Pletcher (Goddess of Fire, Favor, A Mo Reay) and one each from Chad Brown (Gina Romantica) and Brad Cox (Angitude). But it’s Cherie DeVaux’s Tarabi whom David Aragona tabbed the morning-line favorite.

Post time for the “The Return of the Wilson Chute,” a.k.a. the Wilton Stakes, is scheduled for Thursday at 4:29 p.m. EDT.