July 10, 2024
NEW YORK — By Noel Michaels
If you are a serious horseplayer and you are not already looking forward to the Saratoga Race Course meet, it might be time to check your pulse because Saratoga is the summer place to be for handicappers and horse racing aficionados.
The highly anticipated 40-day Saratoga racing season lasts throughout the heart of the summer from July 11, running five days a week Wednesdays through Sundays, and ending on Labor Day, Sept. 2. The Saratoga meet will feature 71 stakes races worth a total of $20.75 million in purses, and the marquee stakes day will be DraftKings Travers Day set for Saturday, Aug. 24.
Saratoga is not only about high-profile stakes races like the Travers. The daily meat-and-potatoes racing also is as good as it gets. The good news for bettors is that so many novice handicappers and tourists will be pumping so much money into the betting pools during the season that opportunities always abound for more avid horseplayers to cash their share of good-value bets over the course of the meet. Here are some tips and trends to give you the edge on the betting public all summer at Saratoga.
Leading Saratoga Trainers
The Saratoga racing season attracts the best horses and horsemen, not only from New York but from everywhere. Trainers from many circuits point their best horses to Saratoga, and the competition for winners is stiffer at the Spa than it is anywhere else. Who will lead the way in 2024?
Chad Brown and Linda Rice finished in a tie for the 2023 Saratoga training title with 35 wins apiece, with Rice interrupting a long period of domination between Brown and Todd Pletcher, who had traded the Spa title back and forth since 2011. Brown won the training title at Saratoga in 2022 when his 42 wins were enough to hold off Pletcher who won 38. Brown won the Saratoga title in 2018, 2019, and 2021. Pletcher’s most recent meet title was in 2020. He also won in 2017 and every year from 2011-2015 as a part of his 14 overall training titles at Saratoga.
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