Don't bank on a Blarp repeat in Friday feature

Blarp set a Fair Grounds turf-course record of 1:40.84 for about 1 1/16 miles in his most recent start Nov. 24, but in an encore performance, he is not even the most likely winner of the featured fourth race Friday at Fair Grounds.

There are course records set because of sheer brilliance, and there are course records set because a sharp horse runs a good race over a fast-playing surface in a fast-paced race. Blarp’s name almost certainly has gone into the record books because of the latter.

Blarp won a second-level allowance, a condition he had failed to clear in four previous tries. He beat the veteran campaigner Broken Key, no star, by less than a length, with the third-place horse, the decent but unspectacular Crescent Drive, another length behind. The whole point of Beyer Speed Figure is to contextualize raw times, and Blarp got a 90 Beyer, not even a career best, for the Nov. 24 run.

Blarp will have a chance at a second straight win Friday in a 1 1/16-mile turf race open to third-level allowance horses or $80,000 claimers. But the 6-year-old never has been one to string together peak efforts, and the pick to win the feature is Pumpkin Rumble.

Pumpkin Rumble exits the $75,000 Buddy Diliberto Memorial Stakes, and on the surface, his showing there, a close fifth-place finish, makes him a contender on a minor class drop Friday. But while Pumpkin Rumble didn’t have a terrible trip in the Diliberto, things did not go his way during a traffic-filled stretch run. Pumpkin Rumble latched onto the tail of the favored Chocolate Ride before the eighth pole, but Chocolate Ride was running at one pace and didn’t take Pumpkin Rumble anywhere. He lacked a clear run and didn’t quite get to show his best.

And Pumpkin Rumble’s best should be good enough. He has been ambitiously spotted much of the last two years, and though he did not come close to setting a course record, he was an easy Fair Grounds grass winner the last time he tried allowance competition.

I’m a Chatterbox drills again

I’m a Chatterbox had her fourth timed workout of the winter when she went a half-mile in 48.20 seconds on Wednesday at Fair Grounds.

The multiple Grade 1 winner and earner of nearly $2.3 million most recently started in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, finishing fifth, and is expected to race throughout 2017, her 5-year-old season.

Larry Jones, who trains the Fletcher and Carolyn Gray homebred, has been pointing I’m a Chatterbox toward the $400,000 Sam Houston Ladies Classic on Jan. 28. A start in that race, however, would be jeopardized if the equine herpesvirus outbreak at Fair Grounds is not soon resolved. On Jan. 3, Sam Houston placed an indefinite shipping ban on horses who have been stabled anywhere in Louisiana.