00:00Let's meet the field for Monmouth Park's 10th race on Saturday.
00:04This one is the Grade 3 Salvatore Mile.
00:06So this is for horses who are going to try to prep for a bigger race next month in the Monmouth Cup.
00:12And we meet the number one anti-gravity here.
00:15This one is Grade 3 placed, but this feels like he's stepping up into a much tougher spot.
00:21I think he's one of the longer shots in the field.
00:23I had a really tough time building a case for him in here.
00:27Yeah, Gino, you know me.
00:28I'm somebody who always likes to make a case for these bigger prices.
00:30This one I thought was, though, pretty tough to build a coherent case for because he just runs slower than everybody else in this field.
00:36And this is a big step up in class for him.
00:38The next two horses we're going to talk about are really tricky horses because they have high ceilings, but they're inconsistent.
00:45You just don't know which versions of them you're going to get.
00:48The first one is Trademark.
00:49He had a really big win at the end of 2023.
00:53But since then, he's kind of been in and out.
00:56He hasn't really put that together, but he has a few races that would certainly be good enough to win this.
01:01They've given him a layoff now.
01:03He's had about seven and a half months off.
01:05So the connections are hoping they can kind of start him over, get back to some of his better races.
01:10He's a little bit interesting, but I don't love him.
01:12At the right price, I could play him maybe if he floated up to like 10 to 1-ish.
01:16Yeah, I agree. Price is really the guide with a horse like this because there's so much uncertainty about him, number one, coming off the layoff.
01:23But number two, just trying to get back to those races that we haven't seen from him in so long, all the way back to 2023, where he was running some of those top efforts.
01:31And yeah, his 2024 campaign was a big disappointment.
01:34So we'll see if he can turn things around fresh off the layoff here.
01:37But like you, I'd want a better price than that morning line odds.
01:41And I think that's my concern with Tuscan Sky, where the three has a lot of ability on his best day.
01:46But for his trainer and the connections, he's a horse who gets bet a pretty good amount.
01:51He's generally not going to be a huge, huge price.
01:54He probably won't be a huge price in here.
01:56And I don't really know which Tuscan Sky I'm going to get on Saturday, David.
02:00Is it going to be the one early in his career who won three of his first four starts?
02:04Or is it going to be the one who's been a little more disappointing in his last five or six?
02:08He's just really unreliable.
02:10Like you say, he's got some performances that make him very competitive against a field like this.
02:14But lately, he's not been producing them.
02:17And also, he's lost a lot of the early speed that led to success in the early part of his career.
02:22And if he can't get forward position coming into the first turn of this race,
02:26I wonder if he's not going to be able to produce one of those better efforts once again.
02:29Awfully cool is a really consistent horse.
02:32He's run 18 times in his career.
02:3415 of those, he's been in the top three.
02:37So overall, I don't have many knocks on him as a horse.
02:40This is probably a little bit tougher of a group overall than what he's been facing.
02:45We can see him right here, though, David.
02:47This was a nice win on May the 27th over at Park.
02:50So I think he's a solid fit in here.
02:52And at least a horse who I could see hitting the board and finishing top three.
02:56Yeah, unlike those two that we just talked about,
02:58he's really reliable.
02:59He always runs his race.
03:00You kind of know what you're going to get from him.
03:02I think the big question is whether or not he can produce a victory against a field like this,
03:06even if he runs his best race,
03:08because he is facing some tougher horses here than he's met in those recent races at Parks and Laurel.
03:13He's just coming to a tougher circuit here.
03:15But at least he's the kind of horse that you can sort of rely on to round out the exact or the trifecta
03:20if you're looking for horses to finish second or third in here at decent prices.
03:23Next horse is surface to air.
03:25And, David, I'm going to keep an eye on him for later in the year.
03:28I don't know if Saturday is going to be the perfect spot for him.
03:32But if he runs like a good third or second in that race,
03:35he could really be a horse that we could show up.
03:38We could see show up next month in the Monmouth Cup and be a player there.
03:41But he hasn't run since December.
03:45And so I want to kind of watch one race from him and see it against this level.
03:49But I liked a little bit of what he was doing last year towards the end of the year.
03:53Yeah, I'm a fan of this horse.
03:54He ran some nice races last year.
03:56He was an overachiever, ran well at big prices on a number of occasions.
03:59I just wonder if coming back in stakes company is really going to work for him
04:03because he tried stakes a few times last year,
04:06wasn't really able to produce his best efforts in North American racing.
04:09You can't race with the anti-bleeding medication Lasix when you're running in stakes races.
04:14And he's got to race off it here.
04:16All of his better races have come when he's using Lasix.
04:18So that was a bit of a concern for me with surface-to-air.
04:21Vitality is the number six.
04:23He moved into a new barn, into a new trainer's care.
04:27And he was very impressive on May the 11th.
04:29And that was his first start of the year.
04:31So what I like about him is he kind of got that first start out of the way
04:35where some of these other horses in the race, they haven't raced in a few months.
04:39I'm not exactly sure how good the horses he was beating were.
04:44But he certainly seems to be moving in the right direction for this barn.
04:48I think my major concern, David, as someone who actually likes this horse a little bit,
04:52at Monmouth Park, it's not really a racetrack that plays all that well for horses with his running style
04:58who want to come from deeper and are deeper closers.
05:02Monmouth generally is a track that plays better to horses who have early speed and are close to the lead early.
05:08So while I think he's moving in the right direction, I am a little bit worried
05:11because the pace projector, you can see, has him towards the back of the pack early in this race.
05:16Yeah, you summed up a lot of my concerns about this horse, Gino.
05:19I just worry he's going to get a little bit too far back in the early stages of this race.
05:23And he is one of those that does have to prove that he can be competitive at this kind of level.
05:27But at least his form is moving in the right direction.
05:30I think the six and maybe even the seven are two of the horses who might be bettable prices in this race
05:36based on if you think they could get the trip.
05:38The six is a closer, but the seven, David, you like this horse a little bit.
05:42He's kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum.
05:44He might be the fastest horse early in this race.
05:47Yeah, he's supposed to be the one that gets sent to the front end.
05:50All of his best races are when he makes the early lead and tries to go from gate to wire.
05:55His recent form leaves a little bit to be desired.
05:57He's got a few performances going back through his career that would make him competitive in here.
06:01But he's switching trainers for this race from a barn that wins at a lower percentage
06:05to trainer Jorge Abreu, who I think does a pretty good job.
06:08And I think for that reason, this horse could produce a better effort on Saturday.
06:12We move to the number eight, Awesome Ruda, who is a horse who stakes placed.
06:17And I will give him credit because the new trainer, Dan Ward, has done a nice job with him
06:22in the five races that he's run for Dan Ward.
06:24He's been in the top three in all five of them, but those races were, again, softer company.
06:30So he's stepping up and facing a lot tougher group in here.
06:33He's also going to be stretching out a little bit, too.
06:35So maybe he's close up early, but I'm not sure if he's quite as good as some of the best
06:40horses in this field.
06:41Yeah, I think you can make the case that he's sitting on the best effort of the year so
06:45far because he's gotten those two prep races going shorter under his belt and now he's
06:48stretching out.
06:49He's just doing so against a field that might be too tough for him.
06:53And we round out the field with the horse to beat, no doubt about it.
06:56Bishop's Bay has run nine times in his career.
06:59He has six wins in three seconds.
07:01And we're going to watch a replay here of one of those wins, which was at Aqueduct.
07:06This was his most recent race.
07:08And this was actually his career best race when you're looking at some of the ratings and
07:12the speed figures.
07:13So, David, I think he's really solid in here.
07:16I don't have very many knocks on him.
07:18He's just not a very fun horse to bet from a gambling standpoint because he's going to
07:21be a really short price.
07:23He's been short prices in every start of his career.
07:26He's, I think, plus 120 on the morning line.
07:28I could see him going even shorter than that to odds on territory.
07:31And that's implying that he's going to win this race 50 to 60, 70% of the time.
07:36And I don't know if I really believe that, especially given the fact that he's been
07:39put through some relatively soft races so far in his career.
07:42Now he's stepping up against a few horses that have actually shown some talent.
07:45So Bishop's Bay, for me, was a favorite I was looking to go against.
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