SARATOGA SPRINGS – Calvin Borel just can’t stop smiling.

The 40-year-old jockey won the Kentucky Derby aboard Street Sense in May and will be racing all summer long at Saratoga Race Course for the first time in his career.

“It’s awesome,” Borel said of riding at Saratoga earlier this week at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame’s annual Saratoga Preview. “It makes my job a lot easier having that many people at the track each day. I’m a likeable guy and the horses pay well.”

The Louisiana native and nationally recognized rider has been to Saratoga before, but has never competed here for the entire six weeks. The major reason for Borel’s inclusion in the Saratoga jockey colony is Street Sense.

“When we knew that Street Sense was going to run here, I made the decision with my fiancée to be near him,” Borel said.

Street Sense is being pointed toward the 138th running of the Grade I, $1,000,000 Travers Stakes on Aug. 25. The Travers is the highlight of the 36-day Saratoga racing season and features the best 3-year-olds in training.

New York Racing Association officials are hoping that Curlin (Preakness Stakes) will join Street Sense in the Travers starting gate and maybe even filly Rags to Riches (Belmont Stakes) to bolster the race with the winners of all three Classics.

“I watched the Belmont right down by the finish line. Its part of history,” NYRA Racing Secretary P.J. Campo said of Rags to Riches’ improbable win. “I’m glad to be part of it. It took 102 years for a filly to do it. It was a tremendous thing.”

This marks the 139th season of racing at Saratoga Race Course. The meet concludes on Labor Day (Sept. 3) when the action shifts back to Belmont Park.

The next few months promise to be intriguing for NYRA as it will learn whether or not it will continue running Belmont Park, Aqueduct Racetrack and Saratoga Race Course, something the non-profit group has been doing since 1955. Charles Hayward is hoping that this isn’t his organization’s last summer at the Spa.

“NYRA is about racing. We lost our way not too far back, but we’ve made a lot of improvements and brought in the right people,” Hayward, NYRA’s President and CEO, said. “I think people are going to continue going to the track and their OTB and talk about what a great game this is.”

The industry leading Saratoga average daily purses have grown a projected 13.6 percent or $92,694 for the meet, from a daily average of $678,841 in 2006 to a projected $771,535 in 2007.