No matter how well Knock It Off runs Friday at Keeneland in the Lafayette Stakes, it won’t be the best racing thing that happened to trainer Steve Asmussen and jockey Jose Ortiz the last week. While Asmussen watched from far, far away, Ortiz broke Magnitude on top in the Dubai World Cup and never looked back, winning the world’s second-richest race over favored Forever Young this past Saturday. The stakes are lower, but Ortiz could find himself in the same position in the $400,000 Lafayette as in the $12 million World Cup – leading on a live Asmussen charge. “He is fast,” Asmussen said. “Two runs, two really quick races.” Knock It Off might actually have impressed slightly more winning his debut Jan. 17 at Fair Grounds at 8-1 under Paco Lopez than in his first-level allowance score Feb. 20 in New Orleans, Ortiz up this time, Knock It Off the 1-20 favorite. Regardless, Knock It Off in both starts still had pop from the eighth pole to the wire after showing good speed: In his debut, Knock It Off’s 11.92 final furlong rated fastest among 11. His eased-up 12.83 was second-fastest in the six-horse allowance. :: Keeneland Spring Meet! Get DRF Past Performances, picks, news, and more. New challenges await in the Lafayette, contested over seven furlongs and restricted to 3-year-olds – an inside draw, more speed drawn outside him, and an added furlong. Asmussen, though, has aimed Knock It Off toward this race for a couple months. “It’s going to test him for sure, and opening day we have no real feel for how the track’s playing,” Asmussen said. Knock It Off faces six foes, among them Trouble Calling, who flattered Knock It Off’s maiden score when he returned Feb. 14 and blitzed a Fair Grounds maiden sprint by more than six lengths, going straight to the lead under Luis Saez and finishing things off with a 12-second final furlong. The Fair Grounds dirt track probably played toward Trouble Calling’s front-running trip last out, and, for what it’s worth, Trouble Calling’s two Louisiana races on the anti-bleeding medication Lasix far exceeded his three without it as a 2-year-old in Kentucky. Carson Street, who also wintered at Fair Grounds, cuts back to a one-turn contest for the first time since a pair of starts in September. A blowout route winner in an off-turf Fair Grounds maiden on Dec. 4, Carson Street showed speed and hung around for a gritty third in the Lecomte over 1 1/16 miles in January, but checked in a fading eighth Feb. 14 in the 1 1/8-mile Risen Star. Trainer Brendan Walsh ran the horse in blinkers his first two races, took them off when trying to help Carson Street settle in his routes, and puts them back on Friday. “Hoping they sharpen him up again,” Walsh said. Carson Street debuted on Kentucky Downs turf, then finished an encouraging second behind Street Sense Stakes and Virginia Derby winner Incredibolt in a Churchill maiden mile. “He loved the one-turn mile at Churchill,” Walsh said. “There’s a lot of speed in this race. We hope he can come running.” Oscar’s Hope, a stakes winner at Delta Downs and Oaklawn Park, will stalk the pace from his outside post. Comport, last seen finishing sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, cuts back to the seven-furlong trip over which he won the Ellis Park Juvenile last summer, but the form of that race, as well as the Iroquois, where he lost by a head, has not worked out well. Star Sweeper should be 50-1, but Arctic Beast can give Knock It Off all he can handle. Arctic Beast has won four New York-bred sprints by 23 combined lengths, and his lone defeat, in the Springboard Mile at Remington, came with the wrong trip over the wrong distance. He meets far stronger competition than he’s yet defeated, but trainer Mike Maker brings the horse fresh into the Lafayette, and even in a relatively easy half-mile breeze March 30, Arctic Beast looked on video like he’s ready to tackle tougher rivals. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.