00:01welcome back to newswire here on sports grit guess what's coming up on saturday it is the
00:06belmont stakes the triple crown challenge naturally comes to an end without a challenger
00:10honestly but let's bring in robert forbeck who joins us for the big race coming up in saratoga
00:16rob has been kind enough to join us throughout the kentucky derby the preakness and now of course
00:20the belmont stakes rob robert thank you again for coming on the show uh let's take a look at the
00:25field shall we uh 704 p.m eastern later start we've seen that for a lot of these races i
00:31think
00:31the thing that stands out to me the most is that the horse that was favored to win the derby
00:36renegade is back in the field here at wow two to one so that tells me you know certainly that's
00:41where
00:42the favorite is but as we saw in the derby and with the preakness as well you just never know
00:48yeah i think uh you know renegade rightfully so i think he ran a huge race in the derby got
00:53nailed on the wire by golden tempo and he's owned by mike rapoli who has won a million as an
00:59owner
00:59has won a million stakes races at saratoga so he's going to be kind of the hometown favorite
01:05uh he's going to get a lot of action but you know to me this is a wide open race
01:09you have chief
01:10chief wallaby renegade commandment to me all kind of the same horse and quite honestly i'm going to
01:16let the price uh dictate my plan here i think i'm going to i'm going to lead towards commandment
01:20getting that outside post getting a cleaner trip ironically he has another different jockey this
01:26time he's had a different jockey each of his last four races but john velasquez is a hall of fame
01:31jockey and has certainly won more than his fair share of big races at saratoga so uh if i could
01:37get
01:38anywhere near six to one on commandment saturday that's that's my play okay fair enough uh and so
01:43there is the field currently as it stands again this could change before saturday as you see golden
01:49tempo also in the race at nine to two as robert said so certainly maybe an exact trifecta opportunity
01:56there uh you know unfortunately part of this is of course talking about horses that are not in the
02:00race and so the preakness is really generally not an indicator of the belmont or at least in the past
02:05it hasn't been uh i'm not sure how saratoga the field there is in particular but napoleon solo who won
02:11the preakness last month is not racing in this one so what what are the what's the thinking beyond
02:16that well he um he was sold he's been sold to some new ownership uh since that race and they've
02:23already announced uh where he's going to stay in stud once he retires so there's kind of there's
02:30there you know there's some um changeover going on with with the horse and you know there are just
02:36so many opportunities if you have a good three-year-old uh this time of year and over the next
02:41few months there are so many other races you can run in there's the ohio derby uh the haskell stakes
02:48the uh west virginia derby the pennsylvania derby uh the travers obviously all these big races coming
02:54up just for three-year-olds so if you keep the horse fresh and um you know you have a
03:00chance to run
03:00for a lot of money uh later on this year and you know keep him keep him in the barn
03:05for this one
03:06uh let's see see how the all the chips fall out here and strategically place the horse and you know
03:11you can you can win a lot of money with that horse this summer yeah definitely so it makes sense
03:16now
03:16that you've explained it uh how about the track conditions for saturday's race i know just around
03:20the country we're seeing quite a bit of rain here uh give me the update on that well it's saratoga
03:27so
03:27quite honestly a rainstorm could come in like at any time i've been i've been going to saratoga now
03:32for a long time and it could be a beautiful sunny day one minute and then 15 minutes later it's
03:37torrential rain um but the forecast is four possible showers uh i think maybe a storm to roll through
03:43on saturday but these next couple days starting uh uh on starting yesterday wednesday uh for racing
03:50there's like a four or five day meet up there this week uh it's supposed to be
03:54you know cloudy weather overcast fast track a tremendous few days of racing it's one of the
04:00best kind of three days of the year in horse racing outside of breeders cup uh probably nine or ten
04:07grade one stakes races 15 graded stakes races over the course of uh thursday friday and saturday so
04:14um i'm excited i'm going up we'll be there in person and uh hopefully the rain holds off and it's
04:20going to be a tremendous race uh on saturday with with uh i think commandment at a higher price
04:25getting the getting the money all right so robert you like commandment to win the race any other
04:30predictions you want to throw out real quick before we uh let you know there's really not yeah there's
04:33really not a lot of speed in the race interestingly enough i think power shift the two horse with
04:37louise size in the saddle might be the horse to catch 12 to one morning line he just broke his
04:42maiden but
04:43uh you know he's trained by todd pletzer who's who's dynamite in the belmont stakes has won a ton
04:49of races at saratoga i think he could be a long shot opportunity in there robert enjoy the trip and
04:55thanks again for coming on all month long for the big three races really appreciate it absolutely anytime
05:01thanks again for coming on all month long for the big three races really appreciate it
05:01thank you so much for coming on all month long for the big three races really appreciate it
05:01thank you so much for coming on all month long for the big races really appreciate it
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