SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Baby Yoda will try to parlay his home-court advantage at Saratoga into the most important victory of his career when he steps back into Grade 1 company for a third time in Saturday’s $350,000 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Stakes.
The six-furlong fixture lured a small but very talented field of six that includes two of the leading members of the sprint division, the speedy Skelly and hard-knocking Nakatomi, who is coming off a troubled third-place finish in the Dubai Golden Shaheen at Meydan.
Baby Yoda enters the race off arguably the best performance of his career, an eye-catching six-length victory in the Grade 2 True North here seven weeks earlier. The win was the fourth in six career starts at Saratoga for 6-year-old Baby Yoda, who earned a whopping 114 Beyer Speed Figure over this track winning a first-level allowance race during the summer of his 3-year-old campaign.
“He just loves this racetrack, he’s a different horse here than he is on other tracks,” said Bill Mott, his Hall of Fame trainer. “I know he ran the big Beyer earlier in his career, but I’d have to say his last race was his best one yet because it came against better horses.
“I was actually wowed when I saw him run like that. I remember thinking ‘Where did that come from?’ It was pretty special.”
Although Baby Yoda was on the lead from the outset in the True North, Mott doesn’t necessarily feel his horse needs that kind of trip to be effective Saturday.
“I honestly didn’t think he’d be on the lead last time, but Eric [Cancel] let him roll up there and he kept on going,” Mott said. “He trained really well here going into that race, and I think he’s had some pretty nice works and is doing just as well preparing for this one.”
Skelly is considered by many the current leader of the sprint division, although the Vanderbilt will be a major class test and his first start against Grade 1 competition. His two most important wins have come in the last two runnings of the Grade 3 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap at Oaklawn Park. Skelly hesitated at the break and was ultimately run down by Closethegame Sugar to finish a disappointing second as a prohibitive 1-5 in his last outing, the six-furlong Aristides on June 1 at Churchill Downs.
“He needs to break better,” trainer Steve Asmussen said. “He runs in scoop blinkers. It’s just very important that he’s pointed down the racetrack. If his head is a little bit to the left he can’t see a damn thing.”
Asmussen added the blinkers to Skelly’s equipment before he successfully defended his title in the Count Fleet three starts back.
The blinkers “have made all the difference, he was pretty hard to navigate before then,” Asmussen explained. “His races with it are profitable, to say the least.”
Nakatomi has been freshened since finishing third despite an eventful trip in the Golden Shaheen. He also was third when not getting the smoothest of runs closing out his 2023 campaign in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
“He ran very valiantly for all the trouble he had in Dubai and then we gave him a little time coming out of the race because that’s what we do when we go over there,” trainer Wesley Ward said. “I also thought the Breeder’s Cup, all things considered, was a huge effort as well.
“He a little slow and Luis [Saez] rushed him and for the first time in his life he found himself just off the lead. That’s not him. He started to back up on the turn, then came running again. I’m not saying he would have won, but if he had a chance to relax a little, I think he could have been second.”
The red-hot Subrogate will bring a three-race winning streak into his graded stakes debut and is another who will get a real class test Saturday. Subrogate earned far and away a career-best 106 Beyer Speed Figure in his last start when dominating high-priced optional-claiming and allowance company by six lengths going 6 1/2 furlongs last month at Aqueduct.
Outsiders Twisted Ride and My Buddy B complete the field.
– additional reporting by David Grening
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