If you are a serious horseplayer and you don’t look 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 starting Thursday, July 13, and will run five days a week (Wednesdays through Sundays) ending on Labor Day, which this year falls on Monday, Sept. 4.

The 2023 Saratoga meet will feature 77 stakes races worth a total of $20.8 million in purses. Saratoga’s biggest day is Runhappy Travers Stakes Day set for Saturday, Aug. 26. The “Mid-Summer Derby” will headline what figures to the summer’s best day of racing and wagering and will include five graded stakes total, all of which are Grade 1s.

Saratoga, however, is not only about the Travers and the boatload of other stakes races. The daily meat-and-potatoes racing is incredible too. Here are some tips and trends to look for to give you the edge all season long at Saratoga.

Top Saratoga Jockeys

Irad (left) and Jose Ortiz. (Eclipse Sportswire)

When it comes to the nation’s leading riders, there is no meet in the country that can compete with the quality of the jock’s room at Saratoga. The title of leading rider at Saratoga carries more prestige than any other jockey title anywhere.

Irad Ortiz Jr. is the favorite to win another Saratoga riding title in 2023 after he ran away with last year’s lead tallying 55 wins. That was good for a 16-win margin over the runners-up, Luis Saez and Flavien Prat. In 2021, it was Saez who took the Spa title with 64 wins, which was somewhat of an upset since the title had been won by either Irad Ortiz or Jose Ortiz every year since 2015. Irad Ortiz won the 2020 title, 59 victories to 58 over Jose Ortiz and in 2019 it was Jose Ortiz who came out on top with 60 victories. Irad won it in 2018 with 52 wins. Jose was Spa champion in with 65 wins in 2016 and with 58 wins in 2017. Irad won the title for the first time in 2015 with 57 wins. You get the picture. If these stats are too old for your liking, you should note that Irad and Jose were at it again at the 2023 Belmont Park spring meet, where they battled neck and neck for the jockey title all meet long before Jose prevailed by a single win over his older brother, 59 races to 58.

Bet the best jockeys in their best spots. Irad Ortiz usually wins the most turf races at Saratoga and led all riders with 31 grass wins in 2022. Flavien Prat was second in turf wins with 26. Prat rode the full season at Saratoga for the first time in 2022 and was successful enough to finish tied for with Saez for second in the overall jockey standings with 41 wins (21%).

Saez led all jockeys in Saratoga dirt wins in 2022 with 28. Saez made a surprising career decision to ride at Churchill Downs and Ellis Park this past season instead of at Belmont. It could impact his Saratoga win total in 2023. Javier Castellano won the Spa jockey title in 2014 and has enjoyed a career resurgence in 2023. Joel Rosario, Manny Franco, Ricardo Santana Jr., Tyler Gaffalione, Dylan Davis, Jose Lezcano, and Junior Alvarado will compete for the remaining spots in the top 10 in the standings. Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez will also be a regular presence at the Spa, as usual.

Top Saratoga trainers

Spa railbirds. (Eclipse Sportswire)

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 there than anywhere else. With the best barns bringing their best stock to The Spa, so many trainers are set to rack up wins in the standings. Who will lead the way in 2023?

It is a fairly safe bet that the Saratoga trainers’ standings will be dominated by Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher, as has been the case for many years. Brown comes in hot, just having amassed plenty of wins and an impressive win percentage at the Belmont spring/summer meet. Pletcher, on the other hand, was relatively quiet this season at Belmont, as has become his pattern in recent years as he uses the first part of the summer to gear up his stable to be ready to win at Saratoga.

Pletcher and Brown have 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. The margin between the two was closer than in 2021, when Brown won 41 and Pletcher won 31. Pletcher won the 2020 title over Brown, 32 wins to 28. Brown won it in 2019 with 41 victories. Brown’s career year was in 2018 when he won 46 races to smash the all-time Saratoga win record. Before that, Pletcher had edged Brown by a single win on the final day of the 2017 Spa meet with 40 wins. Brown won the Spa title in 2016 with 40 wins, ending Pletcher’s dominant stretch where won the title for six straight seasons from 2010 to 2015 (he has 14 overall Saratoga trainer titles).

Don’t just bet Brown and Pletcher indiscriminately – bet them in their best spots. For Pletcher, we’re talking about 2-year-old races and dirt races. For Brown it’s turf routes, where he has far outpaced all other trainers at the Spa for the last decade. Pletcher won 25 dirt races in 2022 to nearly double the next winningest trainer on the main track. On the turf, Brown won 30 races, more than doubling the next nearest trainer in turf wins.

Plenty of other trainers will offer good value as well. Mike Maker is known for getting off to hot starts at Saratoga. He finished fourth in the 2022 standings with 17 wins and was third with 25 wins in 2021. Steve Asmussen was 13-for-49 for 27% at Saratoga in 2022 and won 19 races in 2021. He had seven stakes wins in both of the last two years. You probably shouldn’t bet him in Saratoga grass races, however, where his record is 0-for-22 the last two years.

Christophe Clement finished a distant third in the trainer standings in 2022 with 18 wins after having won 17 races in 2021. Clement won only three dirt races at each of the last two meets, so only bet him in grass races, especially turf sprints where Clement is the king at Saratoga. Speaking of turf sprint royalty, the queen of the Saratoga turf sprints is Linda Rice whose win total in Spa turf sprints the last 20 years dwarfs all other trainers.

More trainers to bet at the Spa include Brad Cox who was 11-for-46 for 24% in 2022 after compiling a similar 13-for-48 (27%) record in 2021. Nineteen of Cox’s 24 wins the last two years were on the dirt. Two trainers that would have made you money in 2022 that are hoping for similar success in 2022 are Philip Bauer (6-for-13, 46%) and Phil Serpe (6-for-16, 38%). Trainer H. James Bond trains his stable year-round in Saratoga and annually ups his win percentage at The Spa. If your focus is more on which trainers are currently hot at this moment, note that George Weaver, Raymond Handal, and David Jacobson all enjoyed high win percentages at New York’s preceding meet at Belmont.

Saratoga main track trends

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In terms of a winning track profile at Saratoga, the first thing to know is that The Spa’s main track is very speed-favoring at all dirt sprint distances. The speed bias is especially prevalent in races at six furlongs and shorter, particularly with 2-year-olds, It’s tough to win from more than a length off the lead in those Spa baby races. The speed favoritism in sprints is a major factor at Saratoga at six furlongs, 6 ½ furlongs, and seven furlongs, as well. At the 2022 Spa meet there were 146 dirt sprints run and 107 (73%) were won by horses racing on or close to the lead within 1 ½ lengths of the early pace.

Saratoga dirt routes are speed-favoring too. While the bias is not quite as strong as in sprints, horses on or close to the pace also have the advantage in dirt routes. At the 2022 Saratoga meet, horses racing on or close (1 ½ lengths) to the pace won 43 of the 72 dirt routes (60%), and horses racing more than four lengths off the lead won only six of the 72 dirt routes for 8%. The percentages are nearly equal at Saratoga’s new one-mile distance out of the chute as it is in the track’s more traditional dirt routes, which are mainly run at the distance of 1 1/8 miles.

So many form reversals happen at Saratoga, and it always adds to the intrigue of the meet for handicappers. An understanding of the ins-and-outs of it could stand to make you a lot of money.

The majority of the horses coming to race at Saratoga are coming from Belmont. With the move to Saratoga, the focus flip-flops in dirt routes from benefiting one-turn route specialists at Belmont to favoring route horses that do their best running around two turns – and at 1 1/8 miles – as opposed to 1 1/16 miles.  Look down the past performances and bet horses whose best route races came on more traditional two-turn layouts such as Aqueduct, Gulfstream Park, Churchill Downs, Keeneland, the mid-Atlantic region, or in past races at Saratoga – but not horses that run best at Belmont.

Saratoga turf sprints

In Saratoga’s turf sprints, which are all run at 5 ½ furlongs, there is little advantage for one running style versus another. All running styles seem to have a good chance to win, whether you bet a speed horse, a presser, a stalker, or even a closer. In 2022, speed horses on or close to the lead won 37%, stalkers won 40%, and horses racing more than four lengths off the pace won 23%. In other words, dirt sprints are much more speed-favoring than turf sprints. Keep this in mind with horses making surface switches.

In turf sprints, inside posts did well in 2021 and 2022, which is a reversal of a long-standing turf sprint trend at Saratoga that has favored outside posts over horses breaking from posts 1-3, which had statistically done poorly for the prior two decades. These days, the average field size in Spa turf sprints has fallen to 8.62 runners per race, which is down from the 10- and 11-horse fields these races regularly used to attract. When you do see big fields in turf sprints, go ahead and downgrade the three inside posts, particularly the rail, while upgrading horses drawing outside posts. A Spa betting angle that usually  pays dividends is to take note of horses that lost their last race from the turf sprint rail post and then bet them back next time if they get off the rail.

Turf routes

Top-class turf racing at Saratoga. (Eclipse Sportswire)

In turf routes, outside posts are negative factors on the Saratoga turf courses. On the Mellon (outer) turf course there were 30 turf routes run in 2022 and only six horses won from posts 7 and outward from a total of 93 starters (7.5%). In Mellon turf routes, inside posts 1-4 were the best, winning 17 of the 30 races for 57%. In inner turf routes in 2022, things were even worse for outside draws. There were a total of just three winners from 103 starters (3%) from posts 9-12 in 2022 in 92 inner turf routes run. The main post-position difference between the Mellon course and the inner course in 2022 was that the inside posts 1-2 were not as good in the inner turf. On the inner turf, the preferred posts are 3-6, which accounted for 60 of the 92 inner turf route winners at the meet (65%).

Finally, in terms of preferred turf route running styles, the pace profile of the average turf winner at Saratoga is a horse that is roughly about three to four lengths off the pace at the first call and about 2 ½ lengths off the pace at the second call. Hold more strictly to this pace preference on the Mellon (outer) course, where deeper-closing winners (four+ lengths off the pace) won 47% of the 30 routes in 2022. On the inner turf, closers still had the statistical edge in 2022 when they won 43% of the 92 turf routes, but speed horses (28%) and stalkers (29%) also won their share.

If you can get to the paddock for inner course turf races, look for physically small, athletic-looking horses instead of large, long-striding horses. The little guys handle the tight inner course turns nicely, while the big bulky horses generally don’t.

Saratoga is the ideal meet for handicappers who follow track trends, because so many novice handicappers and tourists will be pumping so much money into the betting pools. Opportunities always abound for serious horseplayers to win more than their share over the course of the summer meet. Hopefully you can benefit from this Spa handicapping primer and use the information to your advantage. Have a great season, and best of luck!