Saratoga Racing Tips: Mark Milligan fancies one that has a big jockey change

American Pure the play with last effort forgiven

Saratoga 21:29: American Pure 1pt win at minimum 3/1

Nothing is given away at Saratoga, that's why this is the most competitive race meeting in the whole of the US calendar, and this $25k claimer is no different, with strong cases to be made for several of the runners.

Likely favourite Will E Sutton is trained by Jonathan Thomas, who is a handler I've got a lot of time for, and he merits plenty of respect as he drops into claiming company for the first time.

However, there's a massive red flag for me with this one in the shape of his original purchase price.

The son of Curlin cost connections a cool $1m at auction as a yearling but they're now prepared to part with him for just $25k on only his eighth start - hardly a ringing endorsement.

Will E Sutton could just be too good but I'm going to take him on with another class dropper in the shape of Brad Cox's American Pure.

This one was off the mark on the all-weather at Turfway in March before following up in convincing fashion on dirt at Indianapolis in April.

He then had little chance in the slop in a much better race than this at Churchill Downs last time, where he was slowly away and made a premature middle-move down the back straight.

I'm prepared to just put a line through that effort.

A drop down to a claimer for the first time makes sense for this one, given he's unlikely to be competitive in allowance races on this circuit, while there's also a big rider change with Irad Ortiz taking over from Ricardo Santana.

It's also worth noting that the owners of this one are known for aggressively campaigning their horses in claimers, which makes this class drop a lot less of a concern than that of Will E Sutton.

Provided he gets away on terms this time, American Pure should get a good trip from stall 4 and looks worth siding with to get back on the winning trail.