Thursday’s feature race at Saratoga saw the latest leg of the New York Stallion Series, the Cab Callaway division, go the way of the Chad Brown trained George Briggs. We hadn’t seen this son of Fog of War since he finished 3rd in the Colonel Liam Stakes at Gulfstream Park in March, but he showed no signs of lacking match practice as he stayed on powerfully to win by half a length under Irad Ortiz Jr, the 2nd winner in this series that Ortiz has ridden in as many days. Despite some moisture on the dirt track, this race was run at a fast pace, with a finishing speed of 94% overall, much of which was setup by the long time leader and eventual runner-up, Buttah. He came into this race after finishing 4th in the New York Derby at Finger Lakes behind Train the Trainer and whilst he is 0-5 in Stakes company, this was close to a career best performance. Setting off quickly from stall 2, he recorded the fastest opening furlong in the field in 12.62s and I think that it is worth noting that he came out best for both top speed (41.14 mph) and run-out speed (33.02 mph). The first furlong was the only point at which he was the fastest horse, but he set a fair gallop and ranked in the top 3 for each of the 8-furlong splits. He had the speed and the track position, but what he lacked was  scope and size. At an average of 23.72 ft, his stride length was over a foot shorter than the 24.90 ft recorded by George Briggs and despite having the highest stride frequency in the final furlong (2.21 per second average), he wasn’t able to repel the strong finish of the winner. Chad Brown’s charge was the fastest horse in furlongs 5, 6 and 8 as he closed down the leader with that long stride, which reached a race peak of 25.43 ft and after just 3 starts, he is clearly open to the most improvement in the field. The front pair put 3-lengths between themselves and the 3rd placed Moe Eighty Eight, who continues to run well without breaking his maiden tag. It’s perhaps fair to say that this wasn’t the deepest race of this series, but much like Wednesday’s contest, the winner is the horse to take from it going forward and it is not impossible to think that this White Birch Farm homebred may be able to step up into graded company later in the year.