Seanow Set for Stakes Debut in With Anticipation

The juvenile turf division should further take shape Aug. 29 when an expected field of eight 2-year-olds line up for the $150,000 With Anticipation Stakes (G3T) at Saratoga Race Course.

Wertheimer and Frere homebred Seanow will try to move forward off his front-running maiden special weight win July 21 on the Saratoga inner turf. Trained by five-time With Anticipation Stakes winner Todd Pletcher, Seanow certainly was tested that day as the Tiznow  colt battled with High Sheriff and Noble Spirit through six furlongs, put those two away to open a clear lead in the stretch, then held off a late charge from Digitial Footprint in that 1 1/16-mile test.

Seanow will move to the Mellon Turf Course for Wednesday's test at the same distance. He opened his racing career with a fifth-place finish on the main track in a five-furlong maiden special weight race at Gulfstream Park before showing his best stretching out on turf.

That early race pattern is familiar to Skychai Racing's With Anticipation entrant Somelikeithotbrown, a son of Big Brown  who finished seventh in an off-the-turf sprint July 23 at Saratoga before moving to the turf and stretching out in his second start. In that 1 1/8-mile Aug. 8 maiden special weight effort on the Saratoga turf, Somelikeithotbrown, who is trained by Mike Maker, rallied from sixth early to score by eight lengths. 

While those two runners enter off impressive wins in their first turf starts, Bryan Hilliard's Swamp Rat is the lone stakes-placed runner in the field. The son of Hat Trick won his debut sprinting on the Belmont Park turf June 17 then rallied to finish second in the Aug. 17 Skidmore Stakes at 5 1/2 furlongs on the Saratoga turf. 

Trained by Phil Gleaves, Swamp Rat will stretch out to two turns for the first time in the With Anticipation.

The With Anticipation field also includes four runners entered under main-track-only conditions.

Last year's With Anticipation was won by Catholic Boy, who won the Runhappy Travers Stakes (G1) Aug. 25 on the Saratoga main track.

With Anticipation's sister race will be contested June 30 at 1 1/16 miles on the Saratoga inner turf in the P. G. Johnson Stakes, with an expected field of nine juvenile fillies. (Two others were entered should the race be switched to the main track.)

The P. G. Johnson field includes Miss Technicality, an impressive winner of a July 5 maiden race going six furlongs on the Belmont inner turf. Raced by Namcook Stables and her breeder John McCormack, the daughter of Gio Ponti  rallied from sixth to win her debut.

The field also includes impressive first-out winner Chasing the Kitty, by Kitten's Joy , who will try the turf after winning a mile race on the synthetic surface at Presque Isle Downs by 10 1/2 lengths. Mintd, a winner of one of four starts in Ireland, will make her debut for Eclipse award-winning trainer Chad Brown.