Wilson Chute

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - Like it was putting on a comfortable pair of shoes, racing oh-so easily slipped back into Saratoga Race Course Thursday for what turned into a warm, bright, feel-good season opener. The 10-race program that started during a brief rain storm before playing out in sunshine, did not deliver the expected storybook type of result in the featured GIII Schuylerville S., though. Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, absent from America's oldest track for two seasons, watched Summer Promise (Uncle Mo), the 6-5 favorite, finish second...

LBD Stable, Manganaro Bloodstock and David Ingordo's Tarabi (First Samurai) rallied down the center of Saratoga main track and finished strongly to take out Thursday's Wilton S., the first race contested out of the reconstructed Wilson Chute at Saratoga. Off as the 6-5 chalk, the $240,000 Keeneland September graduate was content to lay second through the early exchanges as Angitude (Violence), a bit reticent to load, showed the way in her first attempt at a distance of ground. Tarabi began to zero in on the front-runner as the field approached...

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - D. Wayne Lukas is back and so is the Wilson Chute, after a much, much longer absence, for the 154th summer of Thoroughbred racing in Saratoga. The 40-day season at historic Saratoga Race Course launches Thursday and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 5. It will be the 77th consecutive year of competition at Saratoga--since the closing for three years during World War II--which coincidentally makes it the second half of the very long run since the first meet was held in 1863. During the eight-plus weeks...

The stakes schedule for the 40-day summer meet at historic Saratoga Race Course will include 77 stakes worth $22.6 million in total purses, the New York Racing Association announced Tuesday. Highlighted by the 153rd renewal of the Grade I, $1.25 million Runhappy Travers S. Aug. 27 and the Grade I, $1 million Whitney Aug. 6, the 2022 summer meet will open Thursday, July 14 and continue through Monday, Sept. 5. The Travers Day card will include six stakes races, including five Grade I events. With a focus on the New...

Potentially, there's a lot to like about last Friday's announcement that the New York Racing Association (NYRA) will be resurrecting Saratoga's long-dormant chute adjacent to the clubhouse turn to enable the running of one-mile dirt races for the first time in decades. Any nod to history--especially at America's most history-steeped track--is generally a welcome idea. Originally dubbed the "Wilson Chute" in honor of Richard T. Wilson, the president of the Saratoga Racing Association during the early 20th century, the perpendicular-to-the-stands starting area that ran more or less parallel to Nelson...