Back in June, Linda Rice had a pretty good feeling about her 3-year-old colt Max Player.
She thought the son of Honor Code was sitting on a big race as he got ready to run in the Belmont Stakes.
Rice was right. Max Player, making just his fourth career start and first in 140 days, ran a good one in the June 20 Belmont. He didn't win, but he finished a rallying third, 5 1/4 lengths behind Tiz the Law.
"I had seen so much progression from February to June that I knew he was going to take a big step forward based on his training," Rice said.
Flash forward to early August, and here is the $1 million Grade I Travers, which will be run on Saturday. The morning-line favorite is Tiz the Law, who is even money. Max Player and the rest of the Travers field will try to bust up the local feel-good story of Tiz the Law, who is owned by Sackatoga Stable, whose operating manager is Jack Knowlton of Saratoga Springs.
Max Player is the 6-1 co-third choice on the morning line (with the Chad Brown-trained Country Grammer). Second choice is the lightly raced Bob Baffert colt, Uncle Chuck, who is 5-2.
Max Player arrived in Saratoga on Wednesday. If this were a normal year, he likely would have been here since the meet started in mid-July. However, this has been anything but a normal season at the Spa.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, everything is different. The Travers was moved to this early date (normally it's the second-to-last Saturday of the meet) to accommodate the Kentucky Derby, which was moved from the first Saturday in May to the first Saturday in September.
Restrictions have not allowed the New York Racing Association to open its gates to spectators.
With the meet being so different, many horsemen have changed their method of operation this summer. Some haven't come at all. Rice, who won the Spa training title in 2009, has a Saratoga presence and has seven winners at the meet. But she has spent a lot of time going back and forth between Saratoga and Belmont Park.
Fifty of her horses are at Belmont, the ones that are in Saratoga are the ones that are getting ready to race.
That's why Max Player has done his pre-Travers training at Belmont. He got his first look at the Saratoga main track on Thursday, stretching his legs in a gallop. His last work before the race was Monday when he went five furlongs in 1:01 2/5.
The big question with Max Player will be how much he has improved since he ran in the Belmont. He has had five works since the Belmont.
"Can I say I know, based on his training, that he has improved greatly from June 20 to today? No," she said. "Frankly, I have backed off him a little bit and trained him more conservatively. I haven't been aggressive with him due to several factors, one being the heat. We have had such oppressive heat that I didn't want to overtrain him."
Max Player will be ridden by Joel Rosario, who rode him for the first time in the Belmont. Another reason Rice felt OK keeping Max Player downstate is that he has done well shipping to run.
He shipped twice to Parx in Pennsylvania as a 2-year-old, finishing second once and breaking his maiden in the other. When he won the Grade III Withers at Aqueduct on Feb. 20, he took the short ride from Belmont to the Big A.
"I would think, in general, he should take a step forward," Rice said of the Travers. "I think he is going to improve with experience, will improve with age. He will get better."
twilkin@timesunion.com • 518-454-5415 • @tjwilkin
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Max Player looks to score in Travers - Times Union
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