My first imaginary claim won an $30,000 maiden claiming race taken off the turf race at Saratoga yesterday. The Tonalist colt named Judicial Restraint looks like he might like the mud. He earned an Equibase fig of 91. The race was 1 1/8 mails, and Chad commented after the race “the colt can run all day”. In the real world no one claimed him again.
The purse was $23,000, so at least this guy is paying his own way. I was hesitant to claim off Chad, but so far so good. It will be interesting to see where he is entered next.
There was quite a controversy about a Pletcher claimer last weekend. After running Beyer of 90 in his first four races, the colt was laid off 6 months and entered back for $25,000. The went off at 2-5, but ran badly, not even changing leads in the stretch. There was a claim, but it was voided. The owner was Cheyenne Stable.
The voided claim procedure is an improvement to the claiming game. There has been some interesting discussion about using a rating system system to replace the claiming system. I guess this works in Europe, but it would be a tough transition here.
I need to focus more on the claiming game. My intuition was that Saratoga was a bad place to start claiming horses.
Buying A Race Horse 