ITM Telegraph — The Horseplayers Tour Hits Saratoga, Plus Randy Moss on the Triple Crown | Friday, August 7, 2026

In The Money Telegraph

Friday, August 7, 2026 · By ITM Staff

The ITM Horseplayers Tour Hits Whitney Weekend

It’s Friday, which means the ITM Horseplayers Tour is back on the board at horseplayers.com. For $20, you play a Pick-and-Pray on a sequence of Saratoga races — this week the contest is built around the last five on the Spa card, including a pair of graded stakes — with the house cut going to Breeders’ Cup Charities. There are two ways to win: finish in the money and advance to Saturday’s BCBC qualifier, or finish in the top four this week and lock up a spot in our season-ending playoffs, where one player will walk away with a $10,000 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge seat at no additional cost. PTF and JK walked the whole Friday sequence race by race — watch below, then get in this week’s game.

This is Week 10 of a 17-week season, and the playoff field is filling up fast. Here are the players who’ve already punched their tickets:

Randy Moss on the Story Behind the Story

Following up on Thursday’s piece, PTF sat down with NBC Sports’ Randy Moss to go deeper on the week that shook the Triple Crown. Moss walks through how a television-rights fight — NBC and Fox chasing the Preakness, with a Belmont date move dangled as leverage — drove the whole sequence, and why NYRA rushed its series announcement out first to control the narrative. He’s candid, reported, and ultimately hopeful: asked to sum it up, he borrowed our framing — the Triple Crown isn’t dead, it might just take a year off.

We’ve also pulled the highlights into a full write-up, including Moss’s reporting on the Fox–NBC negotiations, the “nuclear option” of a July 4th Preakness, and what he expects Maryland to do with the purse. Read the full write-up →

A Huge Saturday, on the Flat and in the Sulky

Saturday is a monster. At Saratoga, the 99th running of the Grade 1, $1 million Whitney (6:33pm ET) headlines a four-G1 afternoon and doubles as a “Win and You’re In” for the Breeders’ Cup Classic. PTF and JK previewed the whole field — PTF lands on Baeza, JK on Sovereignty, a Bill Mott exacta for team ITM — and both tip their caps to Mark Casse and the connections of Nitrogen, who tries the boys and bids to become the first filly or mare to win the Whitney since Personal Ensign in 1988, and just the seventh ever.

Meanwhile at the Meadowlands, it’s harness racing’s biggest day: the $1 million Hambletonian (Race 11, 4:51pm ET) and the $500,000 Hambletonian Oaks (Race 8, 3:36pm ET). And here’s the thing for flat players — the money pays exactly the same as it does at Saratoga. PTF brought in Ray Cotolo and Mikee P to make the Hambo make sense for the thoroughbred crowd, centered on a three-horse showdown among Big Ranger (the 2-1 morning-line favorite), Apex, and Endurance.

Around the Board

Two more cards from the ITM team for your Friday. Out west, Dean Keppler goes through Del Mar top to bottom, with his best bet Opus Uno in Race 4, a returning gelding he expects to prove tough to reel in late. Read Dean’s Del Mar card →

At Monmouth (first post 2:00pm ET), Eric Solomon has the full card in his sixth season covering the meet, and he leans to a Chad Brown firster, Blackfin, in the opener — a daughter of Kingman out of Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Uni. Eric also flags a good reason to get to the track Saturday: the $500 Whitney Day Monmouth/Saratoga contest carries a 25% on-site bonus. Read Eric’s Monmouth card →

More all weekend at inthemoneypodcast.com, with daily previews on the ITM YouTube channel and premium tips on ITM Plus.