I\'m looking at this race & one horse jumps off the form at me-Afleet Again at 8/1 ML.
1st off, To Honor and Serve at 6/5 ML has to be everyone\'s bet against. He peaked in the Remsen as a 2yo, never was the same as a 3yo & ran a poor race 1st off the layoff sprinting. since then only 1 workout and one would have to have a lot of faith in Mott to swallow the 6/5 here.
Now let\'s go to last year\'s Withers winner, Afleet Again. I think he\'s been running too far this year and a turnback to 1 1/8 suits him perfectly. His best races have come around 1 1/16 so I don\'t think long distance racing is his forte. Just put a line through that last turf race add in development from 3 to 4 from TGI and this one looks like he should be the 6/5 favorite.
Please note that this horse Afleet Again has a psychological issue. The horse must run outside other horses. Either watch the video of his races or look at the path info on the sheet. I crushed this horse in the race at PRX and was there to watch him go an extra path wide of the next widest horse (on all 3 turns). He ended up crushing me bad (I could have gotten out if he had managed to win the photo for the exacta, but didn\'t). He won the Withers because there is only one turn and you can only go so wide if you only have one turn to do it in. To be honest, I think this race at Saratoga is tough and I can\'t tell you what to do. I agree the derby trail horse looks very suspect at low odds and I laud looking elswehere. However, when you look at Afleet Again, please take note of his tendency to run wide.
He got his run outside of horses, unfortunately when they were hitting the far turn at Saratoga, he was in Clifton Park. I knew I was dead down the backstretch when he wasn\'t on the screen.