Amoss, Graham faring well with favorites at Fair Grounds meet

Any horseplayer knows how hard it is to grind out a profit on short-priced favorites. Your win percentage has to be astronomical for the few misses not to eat away the earnings from regular but limited hits.

So far at this Fair Grounds meet, the jockey-trainer combination of Tom Amoss and James Graham has buried that axiom.

Amoss has given Graham 12 mounts during the two racing weeks in the books at this meet, and those runners have produced an 8-2-1 record and a $2 win return on investment of $3.16, that despite the fact that the longest-priced winner of the bunch was a mere 9-5.

Amoss, the leading trainer entering Week 3 of the Fair Grounds season, has three horses entered on Thursday’s card, and Graham, easily the leading rider so far with 16 wins, rides two of them, both likely odds-on favorites. Control Stake is 6-5 on the morning line in race 2, a first-level allowance sprint for 2-year-olds, and is nearly certain to go off a shorter price than that. And in race 6, a starter optional claimer at two turns on turf, Little Face is 8-5 on the morning line and also a likely shorter actual price.

Control Stake has kept to the lesser circuits so far, finishing second in his debut, then winning a maiden race at Indiana Grand and most recently finishing second at Delta Downs in the one-mile, $200,000 Jean Lafitte Stakes, a prep for the Delta Jackpot. The Jackpot result did not flatter Control Stake, as the horse who beat him at Delta, Golden Actor, ran up the track, but that might not matter Thursday. Control Stake is back to a one-turn trip that might prove more suitable and benefits especially from a lack of qualified opposition.

Maybe it means nothing, but Graham has so far ridden all of Amoss’s winners at this meet and is not aboard Populist Politics in the featured seventh, a dirt-route second-level allowance race also open to $40,000 claimers. Populist Politics, a longtime Louisiana stakes horse with earnings of almost $600,000, is making his first start since May, and the fact that he’s entered for his first claiming tag does not necessarily reflect negatively on his chances. Amoss just won Sunday with multiple graded stakes winner Sum of the Parts, who also was dropped in for a $40,000 tag.

Populist Politics has a chance but is no standout, with five of the six entrants looking capable of victory. Graham winds up on Song to You, who should get a good trip tracking the pace of the rail-drawn Go Go Rocket, though Song to You comes off a poor showing at Churchill. Song to You’s trainer is Mike Stidham, with whom Graham has teamed to go 7-3-3-0 at the meet.

Eramia feeling better

Richard Eramia separated a shoulder when thrown from a mount galloping out after a race Saturday, but his agent, Rick Mocklin, said Eramia could return to action as soon as Dec. 11. Eramia is scheduled to see a specialist in Dallas on Wednesday to make certain his shoulder didn’t sustain more serious damage, but on Monday, he told Mocklin “he was feeling so much better that he could be back next week,” Mocklin said.