Saratoga’s 2023 Jim Dandy: Never Mind The Post Positions And Odds, Here Comes Forte With Blinkers

Geaux Rocket Ride has the Haskell well done and dusted, and this weekend the focus shifts from the Jersey Shore to the Adirondacks, where the man of the hour is Saratoga's deceptively difficult mile-and-an-eighth $500,000 Jim Dandy on Saturday, 29 July. Unsurprisingly, the man of the hour is the Todd-Pletcher-trained Forte, second in the Belmont to Arcangelo because he — Forte and nobody else — left himself with a bit more to do in the final furlong of the mile-and-a-half monster run than he, and everybody else, thought would be required of him at that point. How did that happen?

One contributing factor, apparently, gauging from the blinkers that Todd Pletcher and Forte's jock, the world-beating Irad Ortiz, have been so gingerly testing in the Saratoga works, was very likely a loss of focus. Which is not to say that Forte somehow lost focus in the last furlong, as he was manufacturing his place run. Rather, it means that Forte's superbly gifted athlete, but a bit young, no? So, as the young are wont to do, they get a bit scatterbrained now and again, for instance, perhaps earlier in the mile-and-a-half grind. Actually, according to Pletcher, the problem dates back to Forte's Florida Derby win.

The trainer gave Forte a solid layoff after the Belmont, and along about his second half-mile work at Saratoga, the jockey, who in addition to having a spectacular 2023 has, in the teeth of it, has also been exercising Forte when he can, mentioned to Pletcher that it felt to him (Ortiz) as if Forte was "paying more attention" to his running mate than he should have been.

With winning transparency, Pletcher explained it this way to the New York Racing Association press office on July 22: “In the Florida Derby, he lost concentration a little bit around the far turn and fortunately enough he was able to rally and get up in time. He sort of did the same thing in the Belmont. We thought in his breeze last week, he was kind of more focused on what the horse next to him was doing rather than what he should be doing. Irad and I had a conversation after that work about possibly trying some blinkers on him. We galloped him in them one day this week and it seemed like that went fine. Irad felt like he was a little more focused on what he was asking him to do rather than what the horse next to him was doing. If we were going to try an equipment change, we felt like the Jim Dandy would be the race to do it in and not wait until the Travers if we felt we needed to make a change.”

Blinkers have gotten rather sophisticated and quite gentle in the sense that the only restriction is of the field of vision, which they narrow and raise, slightly, giving the wearer actually a more workmanlike view of the field in front of him or her. Blinkers are about providing a more direct line into the future, meaning, about where the horse is going. They lend a sense of the work in front. At the same time, that restriction can unfetter the dialogue between jockey and horse in the way that, absent nervous-making threats from the side, the horse 'hears' the jockey's signals more clearly, the jockey doesn't have to work so hard to get a clear response in the dialogue, and both of them can concentrate on the race more easily.

As with almost everything else in life, however, blinkers can work in the opposite way: Paring back the perceptions can freak some horses out. Ortiz and Pletcher clearly think that's not the case with Forte. Ideally, from their perspective, what we'll see is a smoother, more laser-guided missile on the track.