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God's Tipster's Saturday Belmont Park picks: Four races including the Grade 3 Soaring Softly turf sprint

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God's Tipster is the Betting God's US Racing expert.
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Friday’s Race Recap from Belmont Park:

(All odds US)

Replays for Friday’s races from Belmont Park can be found here:

nyra.com

Belmont Park:

Race 1: 2nd@ 0.80/1

Race 4: DID NOT FINISH

Race 7: SCRATCH

In Race 1, Mooney Mooney broke well and sped out to battle for the early lead. After putting away the early pacesetters he battled to midstretch before being passed on the outside by rank outsider My Girl Jal. In Race 4, Impazible Donna broke awkwardly before being pulled up a few steps out from the gate. I hope everything is okay with her.

Let’s head back to Belmont for some Saturday racing. Once again our stretch of good racing weather continues with fast and firm conditions beneath sunny skies. You’ll notice I’m focusing mostly on dirt races - where I’ve been more profitable. The one exception was the turf stakes race today where I’m taking a shot. Let’s get started..

Belmont Park:

Race 1: Frisky Jim - 1 pt win (US Morning Line Odds: 5/2)

Maiden claimers kick off our Saturday afternoon. I’m not enamored with the runners with starts under their belt so I’m siding with Frisky Jim for Wesley Ward who’s been red hot this year (31% wins) and this meet as well (40% wins) and Hall of Fame rider John Velazquez. Frisky Jim is by Breeder’s Cup Classic winner, Ghostzapper out of a Grade 3 winning dam who won 8 of 21 starts. Ward is known for sending them fit and ready first time out and this one has several five furlong works (my favorite!) at Keeneland.

Race 4: Life and Light - 1 pt win (US Morning Line Odds: 12/1)

Allowance optional claimers race a mile and I’m looking at the longest price in the field as my top connection. Part of my logic is that this field of six looks so evenly matched that it just makes good value sense to use the longest price. And while Life and Light’s price might be long, I don’t think it actually reflects his chances to win. Life and Light is one of only three runners in this field to have won at today’s mile distance and is the only one who’s done it three times. As a matter of fact he’s the field’s only three time winner. After a tough debut and four starts on polytrack (two of which were pretty strong), this runner reeled off back to back wins at Aqueduct racing a mile. From there his connections tried running him on turf and he didn’t run poorly considering he earned his career second highest speed figure and faced a heck of a lot tougher group than he meets today. Bombs away!

Race 6: Colonel Bowman - 1 pt win (US Morning Line Odds: 5/2)

Allowance optional claimers sprint 7 furlongs and our likely heavy favorite, Vittorio, who’s 8/5 on the morning line but is more likely to go off closer to 1/1 is a horse I think might be a bit vulnerable cutting back to sprints. His three most recent starts have been better than the races most of the competition has been putting up. The problem for him is that he’s had that success in two turn races and he now cuts back to a distance he’s never raced at. Looking at his sprint numbers, they’re okay but actually look a little worse than the best sprinters in here. Colonel Bowman on the other hand has won three straight races at three different tracks culminating with a career high speed figure of 90 last time out right here at Belmont less than ten days ago. He gets the nation’s leading rider and looks like he’ll sit the right trip off the speed.

Race 7: Queen Picasso - 1 pt win (US Morning Line Odds: 5/1)

The Grade 3 Soaring Softly at 7 furlongs on turf drew a fun field of six three year old filly turf sprinters. I have nothing against favored Love Appeals other than looking elsewhere for value and I found that value in her stablemate Queen Picasso. Queen Picasso made her debut at Gulfstream a winning one on March 5, pressing the pace early and out-gaming a next-out winner in Soviet Excess. I find it interesting that trainer Christophe Clement shortens this one up now and that’s a 23% winning move for him. This miss has a half brother who was 7 for 15 lifetime while racing in Europe and was a Group 1 winner winning the Prix de la Forest in France at today’s 7 furlong distance. She’s been working well and has the look of a sleeper in this rock solid group.

Best of luck to all our members playing Saturday’s races from Belmont Park!

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