Forte faces three American Classic winners in G1 Travers
At 0h45, on August 23, 2023 • By SARATOGA
The field is set for the 154th running of the Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers on August 26 at Saratoga Race Course, which will see the winners of each of the three legs of the Triple Crown and last year’s Champion 2-Year-Old Colt all vie for superiority amongst a wide open 3-year-old male division.
Repole Stable and St. Elias Stable’s Forte, the 2022 Champion 2-Year-Old Colt, headlines this year’s Travers and sports a ledger of 9-7-1-0 while bragging field-best earnings of $2,954,830.
The son of Violence enters from a narrow triumph in the Grade 2 Jim Dandy presented by DK Horse on July 29 over a sloppy and sealed Spa main track. Racing an even third along the inside down the backstretch, Forte raced in between Angel of Empire and Saudi Crown in upper stretch and defeated the latter by a nose while earning a career-high 105 Beyer Speed Figure.
The Jim Dandy victory was a redeeming one for Forte, who finished a late-closing second in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes presented by NYRA Bets on June 10, five weeks after being scratched as the morning-line favorite for the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby.
The Travers is carded as Race 12 on a blockbuster 13-race program, which also includes the Grade 1, $600,000 Forego, the Grade 1, $500,000 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial, the Grade 1, $500,000 Ballerina, which offers a “Win and You’re In” berth to the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, and the Grade 1, $750,000 Resorts World Casino Sword Dancer Invitational – a “Win And You’re In” qualifier for the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf. First post is 11:40 a.m.
