Delta Downs: Borgata a sweet spot for Grand Contender

A trainer doesn’t win with 30 percent of his starters year in and year out chasing pie in the sky. Such a lofty strike rate demands the kind of cold realism Tom Amoss employs, and Amoss is at it again with the 6-year-old gelding Grand Contender.

A one-time $15,000 claimer, Grand Contender has been on a strong run for Amoss and owner Maggi Moss since late last summer. He has three wins, two seconds, and a fourth in six starts dating to Sept. 4, and since easily winning the $150,000 Delta Mile in November, Grand Contender has held his own at Fair Grounds in the best two-turn dirt stakes run this meet, finishing second in the Jan. 18 Louisiana Handicap and second Feb. 22 in the Mineshaft Handicap.

One option would be to give Grand Contender a shot in the $400,000 New Orleans Handicap on March 29, but that’s not the way Amoss and Moss play the game. The race is probably too far and too tough, and instead, Grand Contender will be an odds-on favorite under Gerard Melancon in the $75,000 Borgata Stakes on Saturday night at Delta Downs.

The Borgata, race 10 with a post time of 9:18 Central, is carded for one mile and restricted to horses who have raced at Delta this meet. That suits Grand Contender to a tee, and his 7-5 morning-line odds are no more than a pipe dream. The gelding will be odds-on, and if he comes anywhere near his best form, probably impossible to beat. And that’s been the case with plenty of Amoss runners at Delta, where his stable has won with a remarkable 40 of 97 runners during the meeting.

The Borgata’s 3-1 morning-line second choice? That would be The Best Glacier, a sharp Feb. 21 winner at Fair Grounds trained by – who else? – Amoss.