Churchill allowance has graded stakes feel

What’s the difference between a no-conditions $148,000 allowance race and a graded stakes race? Not too much.

Four of the dozen entrants in featured race 9 Sunday at Churchill Downs made their most recent start in graded company. Eleven ran in a graded race sometime in their last four starts. And the 12th member of the cast, Run Carson, exits a win in the ungraded $135,000 Carle Place at Aqueduct.

Carded for 5 1/2 furlongs on grass, the Sunday feature drew a wildly competitive and diverse cast. Run Carson departs 3-year-old restricted races to face older horses for the first time since he beat them in a first-level Colonial Downs allowance this summer. Dhabab finished second last out in the Grade 2 Nearctic at Woodbine. Three horses exit the Grade 2 Woodford at Keeneland. The filly Bling takes on males for the first time in her career. Stitched cuts back to a short sprint for the first time in a year and a half.

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Charcoal, second in the Woodford, rates a solid chance on current form good enough that he was entered in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, though he failed to draw into the race from the also-eligible list. Charcoal’s trainer, Tracy Wisner, has only five wins from more than 100 starters this year but has managed Charcoal through a successful 8-year-old campaign – yet another horse by English Channel excelling at an age when many Thoroughbreds have been retired.

Race 4 also merits attention. Restricted to 3-year-olds and open to second-level allowance horses and $125,000 claimers, this dirt route drew six entrants. Brad Cox trains two of them, Donegal Destiny and Star of Wonder, and while Donegal Destiny has started his career with two wins, Star of Wonder appears the deeper talent. After capturing his first two starts, both around one turn, Star of Wonder disappointed at Keeneland last month making his two-turn debut, finishing a well-beaten sixth, but Cox gives him a second route try, this time with blinkers removed.

The Bill Mott-trained Parchment Party races in blinkers for the first time. Parchment Party won two Churchill routes as a 2-year-old last fall, and while he has taken two losses after returning from an 11-month layoff, Parchment Party can rebound. A short stretch 1 1/16-mile comeback race at Keeneland didn’t suit him, and at Churchill on Nov. 9, Parchment Party, a closer, got caught in a paceless race.

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