Two of the fastest maiden winners from the 2022-23 Fair Grounds meet, Bo Cruz and Banishing, hook up in the featured sixth race Monday at Fair Grounds, but the pair of talented 4-year-olds must deal with the sharp Louisiana-bred 6-year-old Behemah Star. The featured sixth race, for older horses at one mile and 70 yards, is carded for second-level allowance horses or $50,000 claimers and drew a solid field of eight. The Fair Grounds racing schedule shifts this week to accommodate Mardi Gras, with no racing Sunday but cards on Monday and Tuesday. The Monday feature is unlikely to unfold like a parade since a bevy of pace players were entered. Bo Cruz, a Creative Cause colt trained by Al Stall for Bruno De Julio, debuted a little more than a year ago with an encouraging second-place finish in a dirt sprint, a mere prelude to his second start in a two-turn maiden last March that yielded a 12 1/2-length win and a 91 Beyer Speed Figure. Bo Cruz returned two months later at Churchill Downs with a front-running first-level allowance win over the talented colt Equivoque. He then made his stakes debut June 11 in the 1 1/8-mile Matt Winn, run over a sloppy track at Ellis Park, where he set the pace but faded late to finish third behind divisional elites Disarm and Verifying. :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. Bo Cruz’s season ended with an 18-length loss as the favorite in the Iowa Derby, a race from which he emerged with a hairline fracture in his pelvis, Stall said. “We just gave him some real time and it’s done him a whole lot of good,” Stall said. “I like the way he looks, like the way he moves – everything has been good with him.” Bo Cruz has gotten in nine works at Fair Grounds, including one drill, Stall said, that amounted to a four-horse race when a pair of workers from another stable came up behind Bo Cruz and his workmate. And while Bo Cruz has ample route speed, Stall already has told jockey Marcelino Pedroza to avoid a pace battle Monday. Banishing got a 90 Beyer winning a Fair Grounds maiden race in December 2022, late in his 2-year-old season, but ran disappointingly in a February allowance race and didn’t start again until November. Off a one-turn mile comeback, he scored a solid first-level allowance victory going two turns Nov. 30 at Fair Grounds, but Banishing on Jan. 13 was beaten almost five lengths stepping up to this class level. Trainer Brendan Walsh has been working Banishing in blinkers, and the colt races in them for the first time Monday. Behemah Star hasn’t worked at all since a win in a sharp Louisiana-bred open allowance race Jan. 13. In December, Behemah Star won the Louisiana Champions Day Turf. “He’s a big, heavy horse and it looks like you’d have to train him a lot to keep up his fitness level,” trainer Shane Wilson said. “First time I ran him, I put some pretty good works into him and he ran flat.” Wilson backed down on Behemah Star’s training, and Behemah Star stepped up with two of his best races. He’ll need another one to handle the tough open company Monday. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.