Casse has good reason to stick around the Spa
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Mark Casse will have two contenders in Saturday’s King’s Plate at Woodbine, but for the first time that he can remember, the dual Hall of Fame trainer won’t be in attendance.
That’s because Casse has two strong contenders in Saturday’s Grade 1, $600,000 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga, and that race, unlike the King’s Plate (formerly the Queen’s Plate), is one Casse has never won.
“I run in a lot of big races and I don’t get too caught up in them,” Casse said Monday morning at Saratoga. “Last night, I was looking at the [past performances] and when I woke up this morning I was thinking about it.”
Casse will send out Nitrogen and La Cara in a field of six entered Sunday for the Alabama, a dirt race for 3-year-old fillies run at 1 1/4 miles. They will face Kentucky Oaks winner Good Cheer, Black-Eyed Susan winner Margie’s Intention, UAE Oaks winner Queen Azteca, and Kinzie Queen, third in both the Delaware Oaks and Black-Eyed Susan.
La Cara is already a two-time Grade 1 winner on dirt, but Casse’s other entrant, Nitrogen, is intriguing given that she’s had most of her success on turf, winning four stakes. Nitrogen won the Grade 3 Wonder Again over a sloppy track, but that came against just two rivals. She used that as a prep for the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks, a 1 1/8-mile turf race she lost by a nose to Fionn in a course-record time.
Nitrogen likely would have been the favorite for last Saturday’s Grade 2, $500,000 Saratoga Oaks, but Casse said he’d been pointing to the Alabama since Nitrogen’s performance in the Wonder Again.
“The time is right,” Casse said. “I think she would have been the favorite in the [Saratoga Oaks], but this is so much more important.”
Casse has only run one horse in the Alabama, that being Salty, who finished third in the 2017 running.
“I’ve been watching the Alabama since I was a little boy,” said Casse, 64, who won his 4,000th career race here last month.
La Cara is coming off a front-running victory in the Grade 1 Acorn, a race run over a sloppy track and one in which she handed Good Cheer her first defeat in eight career starts. La Cara missed a scheduled start in the Coaching Club American Oaks due to the barn she was in being placed under a precautionary quarantine the morning of the race.
The CCA Oaks was won by Scottish Lassie, who is bypassing the Alabama to await the Grade 1 Cotillion at Parx on Sept. 20.
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