Tuesday Thoughts

• I noted this in another post, but both Marcus Vitali and Orlando Bocachica have been the hot trainer and jockey, respectively, recently. Bocachica has guided home fourteen winners, good for a tie for fourth in the standings. Vitali, meanwhile, has had nine winners, second place behind Jorge Navarro, and hits at 29%. He's not a well-known name outside of Monmouth, so get the good prices on him before everyone else catches on.
• Even less talked about is Bruce Alexander. He's only had six starters on the year, but he's won with four of them.
• The Pegasus is being run on Sunday. In my opinion, it would make more sense to run the Pegasus on Memorial Day weekend, then the Long Branch Stakes on Independence Day weekend, then the Haskell. That way, horses would have a better opportunity to run in all three races.
• For that matter, if the Monmouth Cup is held on Haskell day, the Iselin should be moved back to early-mid September, to allow more time for horses to run in both.
• It's nice to see Maryland-based Cecily Evans take two mounts on Monmouth on Friday. The big question: will Evans and fellow Maryland-based Nik Juarez stay at Monmouth all summer, or will they return to Laurel once they re-open in July?
• On Friday, there's three steeplechase races at Monmouth. This represents a 33% increase from last year, when there were two steeplechase races on the comparable Friday.
• I was going through some Monmouth news archives the other day, and found some gems. Specifically, that War Emblem was withdrawn from consideration for the 2002 Haskell on July 24 of that year, only to re-enter the mix three days later. Of course, he won that race easily.
  There's also the fact that Empire Maker was entered in the 2003 Jersey Derby (may that race rest in peace), only to scratch and run in the Belmont twelve days later. That was a good move.
• Freestyler won his third race on Sunday, having won all of them in gutsy style. I've been formulating a race series called the "Monmouth Park Championship Series", which would be year-end championship for horses who performed well at Monmouth over the course of the season. It's still in the developing stages, but rest assured, it's "shore" to be great.