Through the opening weeks of the Saratoga Race Course meeting, Saratoga Live, the daily Fox Sports broadcast from Saratoga, has aired on repeat a feature on trainer Amelia Green, who saddled her first starter last year.
Though she's gone to the winner's circle with her horses eight times since going on her own, none of those wins had come at Saratoga ... yet.
READ: On the Rise: Amelia Green Plots Her Course as Trainer
"They keep showing that feature, and I felt like people would look up my stats and be like, 'Is she ever going to get a winner?'" Green said, a grin of relief and happiness on her face as raindrops fell. "I can finally feel a little better about it."
Green got that elusive first Saratoga win July 31 in an off-the-turf maiden special weight. The main body of the eight-horse field scratched down to four and gained a runner when main-track-only entrant The Obliterator drew in as the odds-on favorite.
On a track labeled muddy (sealed), Minorinconvenience stalked pacesetting Force up the backstretch of the seven-furlong race, originally carded at 1 1/16 miles. Jockey Ricardo Santana Jr. gave the colt his cue heading into the far turn, and from there it was a one-horse race, as the gray or roan son of Mendelssohn splashed home 10 1/2 lengths in front of The Obliterator.
Green co-owns the colt with Amanda Gillman.
"We both worked for Todd (Pletcher) for many years and we became best friends," Gillman said. "We kind of worked the same job and would travel together."
They paid $20,000 for Minorinconvenience at the 2024 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Yearling Sale.
"Amelia was at Keeneland with Todd's string, and we were working together every day, and we popped over to the sale," Gillman said. "We just kind of kept coming back to him and thought we might as well take a shot. And then we kind of panicked, but a good friend of ours, Frankie Lopez, broke him."
"I called Frankie before we went in the winner's circle," Green said. "I'm so proud of him, and it was a good team effort."
Minorinconvenience was bred in New York by Steve Barberino and is out of the Mission Impazible mare Skyler's Lil Cutie.
Gillman and Green had contemplated pinhooking him, thinking he looked like an early 2-year-old.
"Then he just became our baby," Gillman said. "Selling him was just not going to happen."
Green had five horses entered on Thursday's card, and Minorinconvenience is the only one that stayed in to run.
"He handles the dirt in the morning fine," she said. "I think he's probably a better grass horse, and he'll eventually get back on grass, but I was confident running him, especially on a sealed track."
Gillman and Green's approach to racing—and perhaps life in general—led to the colt's name.
"Whenever something happens, no matter how big or small, we say it's just a minor inconvenience," Gillman said. "The worst thing in the world could happen, and we're just like, 'Minor inconvenience.'"
Off the turf? Muddy track? Seventh-place finish in his first race? Doing interviews in the rain? Minor inconveniences, especially when you're standing in the winner's circle at Saratoga.
