There have been few hotter barns in the first month of the racing season at Saratoga Casino Hotel than that of Margaret Spagnola. Defending top trainer Gary Levine leads the way in the early going of 2021 among conditioners but Spagnola hasn’t been far behind in the first few weeks of the campaign. On Monday, Spagnola’s barn stayed hot as the trotters from her stable shined. Match My Miracle (Imagistic) went coast-to-coast in a $6,150 trotting event to extend his win streak to three on Monday. Brett Crawford is the regular pilot for most of the Spagnola-trained horses and sat behind Match My Miracle as he set a new lifetime mark in his resounding, wire-to-wire victory on an afternoon in Saratoga that actually felt like springtime. Match My Miracle, who is owned by Dave Spagnola and the Our Blue Streaks Stable of NY, had a strong 2020 season that saw him win six races and hit the board eleven times in eighteen starts. Here in ’21, the five year old gelding is now three-for-three after his career best Monday score that came as the public’s odds-on favorite. Longshot Lazzaro (Billy Dobson) closed to finish second while Sweet Sofie T (Jimmy Devaux) earned the show spot. Another Spagnola-trained trotter, Amazing Sevens, almost went back-to-back with Match My Miracle on Monday as he got tracked down late in the mile in a $7,700 trotting race to finish a strong second while dismissed at odds of 9-1 as the hot start for the Spagnola stable continued.
Live racing continues on Tuesday afternoon with a matinee kicking off at Noon.
Mike Sardella
Photo: Melissa Simser-Iovino
