Bitumen, Runaway Lute Top Hopeful

While many things have changed about Saratoga Race Course in the past few years, one thing hasn’t: the meet comes to a close Sept. 5 with the Hopeful Stakes (gr. I) for 2-year-olds. In a surprise plot twist as the curtain falls, trainer Todd Pletcher does not have a runner in the seven-horse cast.

The heavy hitters in the seven-furlong Hopeful are Joseph Sutton's Bitumen and Harold Lerner and Nehoc Stables' New York-bred Runaway Lute. Both will carry top weight of 122 pounds under the allowance condition of the $350,000 race. Grade III winner Classic Empire will carry 120.

Bitumen, who was bred in Kentucky by Audrey Otto’s Jamm Ltd., is by Mineshaft   out of a half sister to Quality Road  . A $110,000 Keeneland September sale grad, he sold for $280,000 at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s spring sale to agent Barry Berkelhammer. Sutton is also the owner of Bradester, who goes in the Sept. 3 Woodward Stakes (gr. I).

Bitumen tore through a maiden field at Churchill Downs June 30, then was an odds-on winner of the six-furlong Sanford Stakes (gr. III) at Saratoga back on the track’s opening weekend. He’s worked four times since, firing a bullet last time out Aug. 29 with a :48.65 half-mile drill for trainer Eddie Kenneally. The Sanford win is one of three at the meet for the Kentucky-based trainer.

Runaway Lute (Midnight Lute  —Nikki Tootsie, by Waquoit) has crushed state-bred foes in two starts at Belmont Park, winning a five-furlong maiden race by 12 lengths and the six-furlong Rockville Centre Stakes by 8 1/4 lengths. Following the July 16 stakes win, trainer Gary Contessa was ready to move on to open company.

“We’re definitely going to go to open company because I think he’s that good,” Contessa said at the time. Runaway Lute brings a string of three five-furlong works over the main track to the main event including a 1:00.71 move Aug. 30.

Contessa's stand at Saratoga has seen the trainer go 6-for-61 (10%) overall, but he is 1-for-2 (50%) in stakes.

Classic Empire rallied from seventh to win the grade III Bashford Manor Stakes at Churchill July 2—earning an impressive 105 Equibase Speed Figure—and has been working steadily at Saratoga with trainer Mark Casse. The colt by Pioneerof the Nile  , a $475,000 Keeneland sale grad to John Oxley, has come from off the pace in both of his victories which bodes well with stretching out to seven furlongs. The Kentucky-bred bay colt is also a half brother to two stakes winners. His second dam is Acorn Stakes (gr. I)-placed stakes winner In Her Glory.

The Hopeful may be without Pletcher, but trainer Chad Brown has sharp debut maiden winner Practical Joke. Brown has 11 stakes wins this meet with a big weekend ahead of him. Practical Joke, by Into Mischief  , won by five going six furlongs Aug. 6.

Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, a six-time Hopeful winner, goes for another with Royal Copy, a son of Bodemeister   who broke his maiden at the Hopeful trip Aug. 13.