Fair Grounds: Delaunay, Gantry to clash again in Thanksgiving Handicap

NEW ORLEANS – As rivalries go, it has been more than a little one-sided: The tally stands at Delaunay 4, Gantry 0. But who knows where things stand when the two best sprinters at Fair Grounds meet again next Thursday in the $100,000 Thanksgiving Handicap?

Delaunay won the 2012 Thanksgiving (the traditional opening-day feature that comes on Day 4 of this year’s early-starting Fair Grounds meet) by 2 1/2 lengths over Gantry. Those were Delaunay’s glory days. The Thanksgiving was the third in a six-race winning streak that culminated with a four-length win in the Grade 2 Churchill Downs Handicap on the Kentucky Derby card, Delaunay’s third straight Grade 1-caliber performance. But by the time Delaunay actually got the opportunity to race in a Grade 1, at Saratoga in the Aug. 4 Vanderbilt, he had lost the edge that he had maintained for more than a half-year. He finished fourth in the Vanderbilt and hasn’t started since.

Delaunay, claimed by Maggie Moss and trainer Tom Amoss for $40,000 in May 2012, got 30 days’ farm rest in Kentucky after the Vanderbilt. He has been in steady training this fall and has posted two quick half-mile works at Fair Grounds.

“I’m very comfortable with his fitness,” Amoss said. “That won’t be an issue. There’s always a question when a horse gets really good if they can get back to that level. I don’t have a sense of that other than to say he’s been training well.”

Gantry won the 2011 Thanksgiving in his first start for trainer Ron Faucheux and owner Brittlyn Stables, and while he never has risen as high as Delaunay, Gantry has been a solid stakes sprinter for the last two years. It took him four starts to win for the first time in 2013, but he broke through in the Sept. 7 Temperance Hill at Louisiana Downs with a 4 1/2-length victory that produced a career-best 105 Beyer Speed Figure.

“According to all the numbers, my horse ran as well or better than he ever has in his last race,” Faucheux said. “We’ll have to see how Delaunay comes back from his little time off. I just know Gantry couldn’t be doing any better.”

Jury out on I’ve Struck a Nerve

When I’ve Struck a Nerve won last meet's Risen Star Stakes in a 135-1 upset, it immediately called into question the quality of the Risen Star field. But the Risen Star turned out all right. Its third-place finisher, Palace Malice, won the Belmont and the Jim Dandy. Its fourth-place finisher, Oxbow, won the Preakness and was second in the Belmont. Its fifth-place finisher, Normandy Invasion, came back to be second in the Wood and a good fourth in the Kentucky Derby. Sixth-place Golden Soul was the Kentucky Derby runner-up, and seventh-place Mylute was second in the Louisiana Derby, fifth in the Kentucky Derby, and third in the Preakness.

In the end, the question left by the Risen Star is this: How good was its winner, the improbable longshot I’ve Struck a Nerve?

So far, that question has no answer. A couple weeks after the Risen Star, I’ve Struck a Nerve fractured a sesamoid in his left front leg, sending him to a very long layoff. But after stall rest and hand-walking and paddock turnout, I’ve Struck a Nerve is jogging and doing light galloping, trainer Keith Desormeaux said, at a training center in Florida.

“I’ll probably get him back around the first of January,” Desormeaux said.

The success of Risen Star graduates left Desormeaux and owner Paul Braverman, the principal in Big Chief Racing, wondering what might have been.

Desormeaux said: “We were texting each other after every Triple Crown race: ‘Can you believe this?’ I didn’t think the glory train would last long, but I thought we’d get more than two weeks out of it.”