Nitrogen, Counting Stars sharpen at Saratoga for stakes targets
Nitrogen and Counting Stars both drilled a half-mile at Saratoga on Sunday, with Nitrogen headed to the Whitney and Counting Stars to the CCA Oaks.
Nitrogen went :48 3/5 and Counting Stars stopped the clock in :48 flat Sunday at Saratoga Race Course. Mark Casse sent out the two Saratoga fillies on the same path Sunday, each turning in solo half-mile works.
Nitrogen’s next stop is the $1 million Whitney Stakes on Aug. 8, a 1 1/8-mile test for 3-year-olds and up that carries an automatic berth into the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The Whitney will be run for the 99th time, and Personal Ensign remains the last female winner, back in 1988. Nitrogen would be trying to become only the seventh female winner in the race’s history. Casse is asking her to take on males after she flattened the field in the Ogden Phipps at Saratoga on June 5.
That Ogden Phipps win was no routine score. Nitrogen won by 12 3/4 lengths in 1:46.93, earned a 113 Beyer Speed Figure, and came within .29 seconds of Lawyer Ron’s Saratoga track record for 1 1/8 miles. The victory also punched her ticket to the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, so the Whitney reads as an ambitious summer move rather than a make-or-break assignment. After the breeze, Casse said, “We’re going to let her do a little more next week,” while co-owner Jon Green called the Whitney “the right opportunity, the right distance, the right racetrack, and the right money.”
Counting Stars’ target is the $500,000 Coaching Club American Oaks on July 25, another 1 1/8-mile Grade 1 and one of Saratoga’s marquee tests for fillies. She earned the trip with a 3 3/4-length win in the June 5 Acorn Stakes at Saratoga, where she beat Kentucky Oaks winner Always a Runner after finishing third in the Kentucky Oaks on May 1 at Churchill Downs. That Acorn was her first Grade 1 victory, and Casse has liked the way she has kept progressing, saying she was in a “happy place” and had become “a serious horse.”
The 2026 meet runs July 3 through Labor Day, Sept. 7, with 73 stakes worth $23,575,000, and the schedule was adjusted because Belmont Park construction shifted some marquee races to Saratoga. The CCA Oaks is July 25, the Jim Dandy Aug. 1, the Whitney Aug. 8 and the Travers Aug. 29.
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