BY BROCK SHERIDAN

Florida-breds Macho Music and Mati Gol enter Friday’s $200,000 Amsterdam presented by Albany Med Health System (Grade 2) at Saratoga Race Course as morning line enigmas in the six-furlong contest for 3-year-olds.

Macho Music is the 2-1 morning line favorite off a seventh-place finish in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens while Mati Gol is 15-1 in the program after winning the $75,000 Carry Back in his last race.

Macho Music produced two imposing victories prior to the Woody Stephens, trouncing fellow Florida-breds by 11 ½ lengths in the $110,000 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Sophomore going seven furlongs at Tampa Bay Downs on March 30. He then cruised to a three-and-a-quarter-length score in the Grade 2 Pat Day Mile over a sloppy and sealed track at Churchill Downs on May 3 before disappointing in the seven-furlong Woody Stephens on June 7.

 

Trained and co-owned by Rohan Crichton with Mark Fletcher Taylor and Daniel L. Walters, Macho Music is the lone graded stakes winner in the field of eight and cuts back to six furlongs for the first time since his fourth in the $197,000 Bowman Mill in his last race as a 2-year-old at Keeneland on Oct. 26.

Macho Music has won four of nine career starts with two seconds and tops the Amsterdam entrants with $504,857 in earnings. He is by Maclean’s Music out of Southern Girl and was bred in Florida by Bridlewood Farm. Crichton purchased Macho Music for $60,000 out of the 2024 Ocala Breeders’ Sales March Sale where he was consigned by Joe Pickerrell and Courtney Roberts’ Pick View LLC. He was also a $50,000 yearling at the 2023 Keeneland September Yearling Sale where Anthony Tate bought him.

Macho Music has post one and Irad Ortiz Jr. will ride.

The seven-furlong Carry Back was the first stakes victory for Mati Gol, who won by three-and-a-half lengths on sloppy track at Gulfstream Park on July 4 at odds of 28-1. Two starts back on May 17, Mati Gol sprinted five furlongs on the turf, finishing third behind Florida-bred winner Most Handsome in the $75,000 Roar at Gulfstream. In one other start this year, he was third in a seven-furlong allowance race for Florida-breds on April 24.

 

Mati Gol is by Ocala Stud’s Win Win Win out of Full Flower Moon, by Prospective. He was bred in Florida by Jorge Wagner and now races for Aguayo Fernando. He has never finished out of the top three with two wins, a second and two thirds in six career starts with earnings of $93,340.

Mati Gol will depart from post seven with jockey Junior Alvarado.

Trainer Chad Brown has entered Garamond, who was sixth in the $162,000 Pegasus going a mile-and-a-sixteenth on a sloppy track at Monmouth Park in his last race on June 14. Third in the Grade 3 Gotham won by Florida-bred Flood Zone in his only other race against stakes horses, in the other two races of his career, he won a first level allowance race going a mile at Aqueduct on April 27 and a maiden special weight at Tampa Bay Downs in January.

Garamond, a homebred for Juddmonte Farm, is by Uncle Mo out of the Tapit mare Blue Watch and has earned $102,480.

Flavien Prat has the call on the Garamound from post two and they are 7-2 in the program.

Rounding out the field are Smoken Wicked with jockey Brian Hernandez Jr., T Kraft has Jose Lezcano named to ride, Dylan Davis will guide Gate to Wire, Gunmetal and jockey Luis Saez and Uncaged will have Kendrick Carmouche aboard.

Return to the July 23 issue of Wire to Wire