Fair Grounds: Bradester needs a new rider for New Orleans Handicap

Bradester’s running lines are a throwback to an earlier era, when horsemen made full use of allowance conditions before throwing a horse into stakes competition. Bradester always has run well, compiling a record of 4-3-1 from 9 starts, but only two of those starts have come in stakes competition: Bradester finished second last fall in the Indiana Derby, and last month won the Mineshaft Handicap by 1 3/4 lengths.

Trainer Eddie Kenneally’s patient approach with the 4-year-old Bradester is paying off, and the addition of blinkers two starts ago has propelled Bradester to a higher class level – and into the Grade 2, $400,000 New Orleans Handicap on Saturday.

“He hasn’t missed a beat, and he’s trained really well since the Mineshaft,” Kenneally said. “The horse has always been talented, and the blinkers might have helped him focus a little. I think the second time I ran him at Churchill last November, he found himself on the lead and he got a little complacent, and he was waiting on horses. I think they’ve helped him run all the way to the wire.”

Rosie Napravnik rode Bradester in the Mineshaft but, according to Kenneally, has chosen to ride Normandy Invasion in the New Orleans Handicap.

“We’re up in the air right now” as far as a rider, Kenneally said Tuesday.

Weights for the New Orleans Handicap were released earlier this week, and Bradester was assigned 117 pounds. Palace Malice, high-weighted at 121 pounds, ships Thursday from Florida, as does Normandy Invasion, who got in with a feathery 115 pounds. Also expected to be entered Wednesday are Fordubai (115) and Mister Marti Gras (113).