There are seven entrants for Saturday’s $1 million Travers at Saratoga. The overwhelming favorite will be Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, and he deserves it. The race is his to lose.

Since his romping victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile to close his 2-year-old career, he has lost only two races, one by a head, and the other by a nose. Both of those were respectable losses — at Keeneland in the Bluegrass he drifted out in that mess of horses that crossed the finish more or less together after loafing their way around the polytrack. At the Preakness, he lunged by the field on the far turn, and looked like he had the thing wrapped up until Curlin found his top gear and launched a surprising and unstoppable run for the wire.

Last out Street Sense grabbed the Jim Dandy on July 29, and proved that he can cover the Saratoga dirt.

So if the odds look a little skewed on tomorrow’s tote board, well, no doubt.

Among the six other entrants, only one of them has ever taken home a purse bigger than $100,000, which is equal to the money that you get for running third tomorrow.

The purse at the Travers breaks down as follows: $600,000 to the winner, $200,000 to the place horse, $100,000 to the show. The fourth gets $50,000 and the fifth place finisher gets $30,000. The last two runners will each get $10,000. The last two only get their entry fees covered (it costs about $11,000 to run in the race). But still: If there’s a late scratch, watch for me out there — I’d be happy to walk around the track. Who knows, maybe two horses will forget which way the race goes and I’ll end up with the fifth place money.

Obviously, I’m joking, but I don’t think that this line of thinking is too far from what got some of these starters in the gate tomorrow. A fourth-place finish, worth $50,000, is richer than most of the allowance races run in the nation. In fact, a fourth-place finish tomorrow would pretty much double the earnings of two of the starters, and a third-place finish would be the largest purse nabbed by the majority of horses entered. Only three of the horses running tomorrow have grabbed a six-figure prize, and $100,000 is much closer to a lifetime earnings increase of 100% for the rest of them.

My advice to these trainers and jockeys would be to simply hold on, don’t push it, and laugh all the way to the bank because your allowance-level plater is about to take home a piece of the Travers cake.

How can this be? Where are all the Grade 1 horses? When we started this season, it was one of the most competitive crops of the 3-year-olds we’ve seen in a long time. And there are a lot of horses out there who have grown into hot 3-year-olds: the filly Rags to Riches, Preakness Stakes winner Curlin, and Any Given Saturday after his win in the Haskell. At least Hard Spun is making an appearance earlier on the card in the Grade 1 King’s Bishop, shortening up to 7 furlongs in an attempt to finally get his trip to the winner’s circle.

Indeed, the Travers is as much about the horses that aren’t there as it is about the ones going to the gate, and that’s because this is the new age of racing, and horses don’t race.

I can see the appeal: Your horse will never lose or be injured. There will be no deflation of his reputation. His stud value will remain intact. He’ll always be full of potential.

There is no time as exciting as that which precedes the proof. If the horse never races at all, the owners can stand around the stall saying, “What if he’s the next Secretariat?” “What if he wins the Triple Crown?” And they don’t actually have to go to the trouble of starting the colt.

That’s what’s going to happen with the $16-million wonderhorse the Green Monkey. I’d lay money right now that the horse will never, ever, hear the call to the post. He was supposed to start last year as a 2-year-old, and he didn’t make it. He was supposed to start this year at Saratoga, and he’s already been shipped to Belmont. He’s not just ducking a race, he’s ducking racing.

It’s a fine set-up, if you’re one of the few hundred NetJets clients with a stable full of bloodstock. Breeding horses is just as important to those folks as entering their horses into races like the Travers. For the rest of us, however, it’s a disappointment.

Those of us who like to see horses run around a track are getting the short shrift.

* * *

Saturday’s race may turn out to be great, but that’s due to nothing other than the very nature of horse racing, its unpredictability, and the possibility that at any moment a horse like Grasshopper will prove himself to be faster than a horse like Street Sense.

And that is one of the keys to having fun despite those who conspire to turn the sport of horse racing into the industry of horse breeding. Remember: It’s still a horse race.

The pace will be set by Grasshopper and C P West, both of whom are coming off of good performances with that strategy.

I think we’ll see a pretty tight clump of horses down the backstretch. Sightseeing is going to make a move right around the same time that Street Sense will, and they’ll be in position to take the lead by the time they come out of the stretch turn.

Sightseeing was coming on strong in the Jim Dandy, and he’s got another eighth of a mile of track in front of him.

If the two up front have anything left in the tank — and C P West did dig in at the Jim Dandy — it’s easy to see that this stretch run might turn into real horse racing.

But how do you play it? You could simply box an exacta with every horse in it. A $2 bet will cost you $84 — three of the nine races run on Wednesday had exacta payouts over $100. It’s not really gambling, though: It’s more like playing the lottery.

I really believe in C P West, but I can’t get around the idea that he’s had his shot at Street Sense.

The horse who might upset, I think, is Sightseeing, but then again, Sightseeing really hasn’t proven that he’s a horse that wins. He’s a horse who runs, and often runs well, but he’s only actually had his picture taken twice, once in his maiden and once in the Peter Pan, which wasn’t exactly the most competitive race we’ve ever seen.

I am going to bet Grasshopper across the board, because I think there’s a chance he will surprise, and a really good chance that he’ll get up into the money, and I’ll earn my bet back.

mwatman@nysun.com