Corningstone, reasonably priced at 1-5, somehow managed to lose the Cardinal Handicap during the first week of October 2024 at Horseshoe Indianapolis. The Cardinal has a different name this year, the Piedi Bianchi, but bettors, same as last year, figure to put their faith in Corningstone on Wednesday. Corningstone is part of an overflow field in the $150,000 Piedi Bianchi, one among a sextet of restricted, six-figure races Wednesday at Horseshoe Indianapolis, where stakes races are termed “handicaps” to avoid a ban on raceday Lasix use but essentially are weighted under allowance conditions. Listed at 3-1 on the morning line, Corningstone should go off a considerably shorter price than that in the Piedi Bianchi, carded for older Indiana-bred fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles on dirt. Based in Kentucky with trainer Kenny McPeek, Corningstone has gone 4-2-1 from seven trips to Horseshoe Indianapolis, where she generally has proved a cut above the rest of the statebred-restricted female dirt-route division. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. That, however, was not the case a year ago, when Corningstone clunked home third in the Cardinal, won by the McPeek-trained Under the Palms, who was 21-1 that day and is also in Wednesday’s field, where she should be five or six times the price of Corningstone. A year ago, Corningstone came to the Cardinal after a tough second in the Grade 2 Locust Grove at Churchill; this season, she finished a tamer fifth in the Locust Grove, which could leave Corningstone fresher for her Piedi Bianchi bid. Joseph Bealmear rides Corningstone for the first time. Colby Hernandez comes in for the mount on Under the Palms, whom he rode to Cardinal victory last October. Under the Palms, racing for the first time since April, checked in ninth Aug. 20 at Horseshoe Indianapolis in the Peony Handicap, which yields six other Piedi Bianchi runners including its winner, Louder Than Words. Three Coats, second in the off-turf Peony, rates the strongest chance among the seven exiting that race. To Much Coffee In the $150,000 To Much Coffee, another 1 1/16-mile contest, this one for older Indiana-breds, Run Away Rojo would have to overcome a very poor post-position draw to hand Chicory Blaze a second straight defeat. He did so by a neck Aug. 20 in the Bucchero Handicap, another race that was rained off turf, but in the To Much Coffee, Chicory Blaze drew the rail, Run Away Rojo marooned in post 12. While posts 1 through 6 since the 2000 race meet have yielded a meaningfully higher number of winners than wider posts in 1 1/16-mile Horseshoe dirt races, the widest draws aren’t hopeless. Horses breaking from post 12 have gone 3 for 39 (8 percent), and from post 11 they’ve gone 6 for 80 (8 percent). Run Away Rojo, a 5-year-old, makes his 19th start in the To Much Coffee, though Steve Asmussen has only trained him for the last two. Chicory Blaze, as a 3-year-old with just six trips to post, clearly has greater upside, and in the three races he’s lost, Chicory Blaze has been defeated by a neck or a head. He narrowly failed to run down Run Away Rojo in August, and while Chicory Blaze should get more than two pounds from his older rivals, he still should take the measure of Run Away Rojo and the rest of them. ◗ The morning-line for the $100,000 Circle City, for Indiana-bred 2-year-olds, seems askew. Granted, Unattainable Love’s debut win came in a race restricted to Indiana-sired runners, but it’s difficult to see how he could be 8-1 Wednesday. Bumped and squeezed back to last at the start, Unattainable love commenced a strong, early bid at the five-eighths pole and powered to the lead before coming off the far turn. He sustained that bid to the wire, winning by more than seven lengths over Circle City entrant Mr Sledge Hammer, who returned to win an Indiana-sired maiden by more than seven lengths. ◗ Spirited Justice, the 5-2 morning-line favorite in the $100,000 Back Home Again for 2-year-old fillies, is more exposed than several of her rivals and offers less appeal at the price than Sahara Hottie, Eltinge, and Kaboom. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.