After running one-two last Saturday in the Lecomte Stakes, an early Kentucky Derby prep, and winning a dirt-route maiden race earlier on the card, the Cherie DeVaux barn returns to its Fair Grounds roots. During the 2024-25 Fair Grounds season, DeVaux dominated maiden and allowance turf races for 2-year-olds of 2024 and 3-year-olds of 2025, winning 10 such contests. On Thursday, she sends out the favorite, Remember Mamba, in the nominally featured sixth race, a first-level grass-route allowance for 3-year-olds. Remember Mamba’s lone start yielded a Keeneland grass-route maiden win, a performance at least a plurality of bettors will judge to be superior to anything the six other entrants have shown. That’s no sure thing. Keeneland is Keeneland, a major boutique meeting, but Remember Mamba did not run in an especially strong race. The horses closest to him at the finish have not subsequently shined, Remember Mamba got a great trip, the winning Beyer Speed Figure came back a modest 66, and Remember Mamba cuts back from 1 1/8 miles to a mile Thursday. Listed at 5-2 on the morning line, Remember Mamba could drop below that price with leading rider Jose Ortiz aboard. :: Big Action in the Big Easy at Fair Grounds! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. But don’t hold the nearly three-month gap between starts against the horse: Fair Grounds has yet to card a two-turn, first-level grass allowance restricted to 2- or 3-year-olds. That also has put McCready in a holding pattern since his debut win Oct. 11 at Delaware Park, where he went off at nearly 20-1 but ran nothing like a longshot. Breaking from the widest post, McCready raced last onto the backstretch before his jockey opted for an early move, running a quarter-mile a full second faster than any of his rivals as he went from last to a pace-pressing second around the far turn. That McCready still finished with sufficient energy to win suggests this is a talented horse for trainer Hugh Robertson, and the colt, like Remember Mamba, has worked steadily. Beekman Street lacked racing room turning for home and in deep stretch, finishing fifth by less than one length behind McCready at Delaware, and he returned Nov. 27 to mash Fair Grounds turf maidens. That marks Beekman Street as another plausible winner while also validating McCready’s performance. The turf allowance slots between an older-horse first-level dirt route allowance and a 3-year-old maiden route, the latter followed by another entry-level turf-route allowance, this one also for older horses. In the dirt contest, race 5, Original Sin holds appeal stretching out to 1 1/16 miles after a pair of good-looking one-turn Churchill miles this past fall. Those were his first races after a long layoff and first for trainer Brendan Walsh. Original Sin kept up decently on the way to an Oct. 30 maiden win, but facing allowance foes a month later, the horse broke slowly and completely lost touch with the field. That he managed third of 11 was remarkable considering his position at the five-sixteenths pole. In both races, Original Sin galloped out miles in front – like a horse who could excel in true routes. The 3-year-old filly dirt-route maiden race, the seventh, marks the debut of Pure Joy, who fetched a bid of $1.5 million selling as a yearling two summers ago at Saratoga. Trained by Steve Asmussen, Pure Joy has logged plenty of miles preparing for her first start. Her first official workout came June 21, and Pure Joy breezed at least once a month through summer and early autumn before ramping up her training after coming to Fair Grounds in October. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.