Last Saturday at Saratoga, trainer Tom Morley watched his 3-year-old filly Scribbling Sarah load into the gate for the fourth race. A bit of a temperamental filly, he had worked hard with her in the mornings to get her comfortable in the starting gate, and the efforts were, he thought, finally paying off.
“I thought it would be very tough on her here,” he said, sitting outside his barn on the grounds of the harness track, “but she’s come a long way in the last three months mentally, and I was absolutely delighted with her. I thought she might just go and get the job done.”
But while Scribbling Sarah handled the walkover and paddock beautifully and loaded smoothly into the gate, some of her rivals did not, and when they acted up, she reacted, breaking through the gate and unseating jockey Junior Alvarado, who injured his shoulder. And without a jockey, Scribbling Sarah couldn’t race, so instead of running what her trainer thought might be her breakthrough race, she was scratched, to come back and run another day.
“She’s absolutely fine,” Morley said. “It was just unfortunate. These things happen in racing.”
Continue reading at the Saratogian…
