Fair Grounds: Good Deed wins Mardi Gras in comeback

Hodges Photography / Lynn Roberts

Good Deed, unraced since last June, goes wire to wire in the Mardi Gras under Shaun Bridgmohan.

There was no hemming and hawing from trainer Steve Margolis a couple days before the 4-year-old filly Good Deed was to make her first start after a long layoff in the Mardi Gras Stakes on Tuesday at Fair Grounds. For lack of an allowance-race comeback option, Margolis had worked Good Deed with an eye toward this stakes return. The filly had trained strongly. She was ready to win, Margolis thought. And he was right.

Eager to flash her speed, Good Deed took the early fight in the Mardi Gras to front-end rival Monono, outrunning her for lead and holding clear stretch rallies from Beat the Blues and Ire to capture the $75,000 Mardi Gras by one length. Beat the Blues got home a head in front of rail-skimming Ire, while race favorite My My My Maria’s four-race winning streak came to an end with a fifth-place finish.

Good Deed, a Richard, Bertram, and Elaine Klein homebred by Broken Vow, won 3 of her first 4 and 4 of her first 6 races at age 2 and 3, perhaps running as well as she ever had when she was beaten only by high-class Contested in the Eight Belles Stakes last spring at Churchill Downs. Before Good Deed could progress into the second half of her 3-year-old season, she chipped a bone and was taken out of training for surgery, finally making it back to the races Tuesday for the first time since June 2.

And from the look of things, Good Deed is as good as before. Before hitting the far turn she submitted to jockey Shaun Bridgmohan's request to throttle down her speed, though Good Deed still set quick fractions of 22.12 seconds for her opening quarter-mile and 45.70 for the first half. Good Deed opened up several lengths turning for home and finished with sufficient vigor to record her fifth victory. She was clocked in 1:11.12 for six furlongs on a fast track and paid $7.20 to win.