Bauer, Rigney strong in pair of Sire Stakes

Owner-breeder Richard Rigney’s foray into Indiana-bred racing in 2018 was a hit. The 2-year-old filly Fireball Baby won a pair of stakes races and earned more than $150,000, while the 2-year-old gelding Snicker Cookie was a stakes winner of more than $80,000. Both horses, homebreds trained by Rigney’s private trainer Phil Bauer, are set to make their 3-year-old debut in Indiana-bred and -sired stakes Wednesday at Indiana Grand.

Fireball Baby is the 3-5 morning-line favorite in the $100,000 Swifty Sired Stakes for 3-year-old fillies, while Snicker Cookie is the 2-1 second choice in the $100,000 Sagamore Sired, also open only to 3-year-olds but with no sex restriction.

Fireball Baby is by the modest stallion Noble’s Promise but out of a mare named Bubbles and Babies, by the great A.P. Indy. Her five-race 2-year-old campaign started modestly before Fireball Baby (perhaps with an assist from the anti-bleeding medication Lasix) found her best form in the fall, just in time for the lucrative Indiana 2-year-old stakes program. Racing on Lasix for the first time she won an Indiana-sired stakes in October and came back a month later to capture the Miss Indiana Stakes in her 2018 finale.

Gabriel Saez, booked to ride Fireball Baby for the first time, will have to engineer a trip from post 1, though Fireball Baby’s work pattern at Churchill Downs looks encouraging, and if she’s progressed at all since last autumn, Fireball Baby ought to win at a short price.

Standing between Snicker Cookie and victory Wednesday is Ace of Aces, a Bernie Flint-trained colt who beat Snicker Cookie a half-length in the $103,000 Crown Ambassador Stakes last October. Snicker Cookie closed ground on Ace of Aces in that race and might, in the end, prove the more substantive horse, but Ace of Aces has a pace edge and already has won at this meet. Snicker Cookie races for the first time since the Crown Ambassador and, given his blowout victory when stretched to two turns in his 2-year-old finale, might want more distance than the six furlongs he gets in his 3-year-old bow.

The two sire stakes go as races 6 and 7 on a nine-race card dedicated almost entirely to Indiana-breds with first post scheduled for 2:15 Eastern.