Crescent Drive could win another for Amoss

Trainer Tom Amoss won the initial second-level turf-route allowance race of the Fair Grounds meet, and he could be sending out the favorite to win the second such race this season, the featured eighth on Sunday.

The Amoss-trained Blarp won race 10 on Nov. 24 racing under second-level allowance conditions in a turf route also open to $40,000 claimers, and the Amoss-trained Crescent Drive rallied for third in the same race. Crescent Drive returns Sunday, and while he is 9-2 on the track’s morning line, the Amoss brand is strong enough and Crescent Drive’s form is good enough that the late-season 3-year-old could go postward a mild favorite.

That is, if he goes postward at all. There’s an 80 percent chance of rain Sunday in New Orleans, and Crescent Drive was a lifeless ninth in the only dirt start of his career, suggesting rain could keep him in the barn.

Even if the featured eighth stays on turf, rain would turn the condition of the grass course much different than it was during this class level’s first go-round of the Fair Grounds season. So firm and fast-playing was the course Nov. 24 that Blarp set a track record of 1:40.84 for about 1 1/16 miles despite winning by just three-quarters of a length over Broken Key, who also is part of Sunday’s field.

Crescent Drive was another length back in third last month, running on late after racing from last. That lack of positional speed has hindered Crescent Drive before, and he will be well served if jockey David Flores can help him keep in better touch with the early leaders. In his only win this year, over first-level allowance horses at Indiana Grand, Crescent Drive made an early move into a solid pace and already had swept to the lead at the stretch call.

There are other viable options in the race, though Broken Key might be hard-pressed to repeat his last-start performance when he breaks from post 11 Sunday. More appealing at a better price is the fifth-place finisher from the Nov. 24 race, Lu Rae’s Lucky Sky, who had post 10 last out and dropped farther off the pace than usual while making just his third start since February. Lu Rae’s Lucky Sky is entered under the $40,000 claiming option and won over the course at this class level last year, and he ran just well enough last out to suggest a plausible forward move could land him a square-priced victory.

Albano, whose last Fair Grounds start produced a second-place finish in the 2015 New Orleans Handicap, also is entered under the race’s claiming option, and is the most likely winner if the Sunday feature is switched to dirt.