- Saratoga Race Course: Meet ends with on stunning note, as 54-1 Nutella Fella wins Grade I Hopeful
SARATOGA SPRINGS — For trainer Gary Contessa, the 2023 Saratoga Race Course meet was an exquisitely carved pair of bookends.
With no books between them.
He won the Grade III Schuylerville with Becky’s Joker on opening day, and on closing day Monday, he won the Grade I Hopeful with 54-1 long shot Nutella Fella.
They were the only two wins of the entire meet for Contessa, a veteran New York-based trainer making a comeback after a two-year hiatus.
Becky’s Joker was a first-time starter in the Schuylerville running against fillies who had already won races, and she won at betting odds of 21-1.
Her stablemate Nutella Fella was an even bigger bomb against a challenging field of 2-year-olds in the Hopeful. He paid $111.00 on a $2 win bet and started a trifecta that paid $1,282.25 on a fifty-cent bet.
“I called NYRA [New York Racing Association] when I was on my way back, and I was like, ‘Guys, you’re not going to like this, but I have a lot of 2-year-olds, and I want to bring just 2-year-olds to the meet,’ and they were like, ‘Noooo, we don’t want you,’” the beaming Contessa said. “But then they gave me the stalls, and it worked out well for them as well as me. But that’s what my barn is now, a bunch of 2-year-olds.”
Nutella Fella, a $12,000 purchase at the 2022 Keeneland September yearling sale, won the $300,000 Hopeful off one start, a win at Delaware Park on July 26.
He was 30-1 on the Hopeful morning line and wound up the second-longest shot on the toteboard when the 10-horse field left the starting gate.
Getting out of the gate was an achievement by itself for Nutella Fella, Contessa said.
“First and foremost, the New York gate crew made this happen as much as I did,” he said. “He was an absolute maniac in the gate at Delaware Park. The crew on the training track side worked with him every day and really straightened him out.”
Besides winning one of the big graded stakes for 2-year-olds at the meet, Nutella Fella followed in the footsteps of his stablemate Becky’s Joker as an inexperienced horse who showed Contessa good signs during morning training hours.
Ridden by Junior Alvarado, he had to pass all nine rivals from last to first to win the Hopeful.
“Mike “The Cop” [Sellitto], Junior Alvarado’s agent, watched this horse work, ran over to my barn and said, ‘Junior’s got to ride this horse,’” Contessa said. “I said, ‘OK,’ I let him work him a few times, and the rest is history.
“When I looked at the field, I said, ‘This is a salty field,’ but if you look at his workouts, they’ve been phenomenal. So it’s kind of like Becky’s Joker. He had the workouts, the question was is he good enough, and we’re going to find out when we load him in the gate, and sure enough he is.”
Muth, the 5-2 morning-line favorite, was scratched Sunday morning by trainer Bob Baffert and will wait instead for the Grade I American Pharoah at Santa Anita on Oct. 7.
BERNARD BARUCH
Early in Monday’s card, Linda Rice kept herself in the thick of the chase for the training championship in stakes-winning fashion, when Pioneering Spirit beat four rivals that included two from meet leader Chad Brown in the $150,000 Bernard Baruch.
Ridden by Jose Lezcano, Pioneering Spirit sat off the pace and won by 2 3-4 lengths nine days after he was third in the Grade I Sword Dancer on Travers Day Aug. 26.
He came to Rice’s barn in March when she claimed him out of a race at Aqueduct, and the Sword Dancer represented the first stakes start of his career.
“The horse is just a dream. Every horse you claim should be that good,” Rice said with a laugh. “But the ride Jose Lezcano put on him was just masterful. He’s such a good rider. I was thrilled with his position. We talked about it in the paddock. He said, ‘Linda, I need to be closer today,’ and he was right.”
Rice put herself in position to challenge for the second Saratoga training title of her career in part by bringing fit, sound horses like Pioneering Spirit back to race on short notice.
“As I said on Seth’s show this morning, I think the key is to let young horses mature, and the more time you give them and allow them to mature into older horses, they’re less likely to get injured, and once they’re 4 years old, 5 years old, they can handle racing more frequently,” Rice said, referring to Capital OTB TV’s “Racing Across America” hosted by Seth Merrow.
