Clara Peeters looks tough in U.S. debut

Trainer Brad Cox hasn’t gotten a huge number of European imports, but of the last four he’s run, two won their North American debut, and Clara Peeters could do the same thing in the featured eighth race Thursday at Fair Grounds.

Clara Peeters hasn’t raced since October, when she nearly won a handicap race at Newmarket, and she makes her first start for North American connections in a second-level turf mile allowance race restricted to females and open to $40,000 claimers. Clara Peeters wasn’t close to being a group-stakes-level performer overseas but has solid enough form over good to firm going in races at or about one mile and has put together an encouraging Fair Grounds work pattern. She races on Lasix for the first time Thursday.

◗ Cox and Ron Faucheux enter the penultimate racing week of the 2019-20 season in a dead heat atop the trainer standings with 33 wins each. Tom Amoss, who has several live chances on the midweek racing programs, had 27 winners. On the jockeys’ side, James Graham pulled out to a six-winner lead (63 to 57) over Colby Hernandez and Mitchell Murrill.