The Travers Stakes 2024
Okay, first things first. You won’t want to miss this week’s Saratoga Saturday, The Travers Show brought to you by AmWager.
Catch it on Past the Wire TV RIGHT HERE!
That is not all! We also have The Travers by The Thorograph Numbers and Patterns also brought to you by AmWager.
You can catch that show RIGHT HERE!
Now to the big one.
Thorpedo Anna breaks from the rail in The Travers in her first start against the boys. Not many fillies run in The Travers and the last to hit the board was Chris Evert way back when. She has been trouncing fillies of lesser quality than the males she will face here but has done it easily and at times without the best trip. She is very good, she deserves the shot, but this is a big ask and I am going to pass on her. She’d be no surprise and will take her share of the money but not mine.
Sierra Leone looked like he had a great set up in the Jim Dandy and you couldn’t really envision a better one for him. Two things, one the race didn’t really play out how it looked on paper pace wise, second, it was a mile and an eighth. This time it is a mile and a quarter, and it appears the pace at least should be contested and possibly fast for this distance. That should give Sierra Leone a very good shot to produce his best effort to date and I believe if he does that, he wins this. It appeared to me he got plenty out of the Jim Dandy.
Unmatched Wisdom is undefeated at three for three including a win over the track in the Curlin. He has speed and plenty of room to continue improving and developing. He has already run fast enough to win this and any forward move at all makes him very dangerous. He has Irad up who can decide to gun and try to wire these or also sit a close-up stalking trip. He also assures a realistic pace for his stablemate Sierra Leone although I do not view him as a rabbit at all.
Corporate Power will be coming from off the pace in here and should be running at the end. I don’t think he is fast enough to get by a few of these but sneaking into the back end of the exotics is a possibility for those so inclined to play this race that way.
Batten Down should be part of the early pace but I do not think he is fast enough to hang with these late. He is bred to be any kind of racehorse so there could be more development down the line but at this point he seems to be in deep waters despite the impeccable connections.
Honor Marie is another who seems up against it in here. Yes, he has had some less-than-ideal trips of late, but he has not done enough or been fast enough for me to believe he can make a serious impact here.
Dornoch is tough to knock but I will do it anyway. He comes in off big and game wins in The Haskell and Belmont. He did have perfect trips in both races and had to dig in and fight for both of those wins. Perhaps those two races took a bit of starch out of him and that coupled with the sweet trips he enjoyed lead me to look to beat him in The Travers.
Fierceness has been a good race bad race horse his whole career and this is a bad race cycle. When he is on, he can be very fast and extremely good. He was that way in his Jim Dandy win. He has never put two together like that and he would need to if he is going to win this. He should have company up top and that combined with his pattern leads me back to Sierra Leone for the win and to turn the tables.
I think we finally see the best of Sierra Leone wo can still prove he is as good as any of the top three-year-olds with a win. He is going to have the right scenario at least on paper and he will also likely be the fourth choice behind Thorpedo Anna, Fierceness, and Dornoch.
