McTigue sets track record in inaugural Saratoga Leo O’Brien steeplechase

McTigue turned Saratoga’s newest jumping feature into a rebound story, rallying from far back to win the inaugural Grade 1, $150,000 Leo O’Brien steeplechase handicap in track-record time at Saratoga Race Course. The 7-year-old Fracas gelding, owned by Irvin S. Naylor and ridden by Graham Watters for trainer Cyril Murphy, finished the 2 3/8-mile trip over national fences in 4:30.45 on firm turf, more than a second faster than the previous Saratoga standard.

The performance carried extra weight because McTigue had lost his rider early in his prior start, the Beverly R. Steinman, and arrived here with something to prove. He did that in orderly fashion, settling near the rear while Take Your Seats carved out the pace and still trailing the leader by 27 1/2 lengths at one point before Watters began to ask for more. Rocket One briefly threatened in the stretch, but McTigue stayed on strongly and got up by one length. St James the Great was third, and Take Your Seats faded to fourth after doing plenty of the early work.

The official results listed seven starters and one scratch, Lynches Knock. McTigue paid $13.24 to win, and the exacta with Rocket One returned $20.79. The final time was recorded as 4:30.45 by NYRA and as 4:30 2/5 on the official chart, both marking a clear break from the old Saratoga hurdle record of 4:31.57 set by All the Way Jose in 2014.

The race was staged during Saratoga’s July 4th Racing Festival and was named to honor Leo O’Brien, who died in January at 85 after a lengthy illness. O’Brien, a former steeplechase jockey who later trained New York-bred standouts, left his deepest mark with Fourstardave, who won at Saratoga every year from 1987 through 1994, and Fourstars Allstar, the first American-trained horse to win a European Classic when he took the 1991 Irish Two Thousand Guineas.

For Murphy, the win also landed as a career marker of its own, with one local account describing it as his 100th victory. For McTigue, it was the kind of Saratoga answer that changes the tone of a summer campaign: a record, a Grade 1, and a new name at the top of a race that now has one very hard act to follow.