Fair Grounds handicapping roundup: Week of Feb. 15

Tale of two turf courses

The first half the racing week, Feb. 6 and Feb. 7, was off turf, while the second half, Saturday, Feb. 8, and Sunday, Feb. 9, was on turf. What struck me as odd was how much different the turf appeared to play Sunday compared to Saturday, a difference that warns against making too-firm, pre-wagering assumptions about the type of race shape a course might produce.

The portable rail position didn’t change: It was set 10 feet out, the innermost position after the true rail, both days. The turf was called yielding Saturday and good Sunday, but I question whether there was significant drying.

On Saturday’s card there were four grass races: Two were won by deep closers rallying on the outside, two by midpack stalkers rallying on the outside. I expected this: The course has retained water this winter, has historically dried slower along the inside than the outside, and the rail, as I said, was set pretty far in.

Sunday’s three grass winners? Clever Thirteen in race 5 pressed a half-mile route split of 47.66 seconds, a pace faster than I would have thought even possible on the course, and won. Miss Bellamy Lane, a 19-1 shot, set the pace in race 7 and won by four lengths. And in race 9, Drewssasin, a 19-1 shot, fought early restraint, shot to the lead coming off the clubhouse turn, and never came back, winning by more than two lengths.

If anything, the turf that had favored outside closers Saturday was biased toward inside speed horses Sunday. That put a big wrinkle in the way I view prevailing course conditions and will color the way I consider grass races in the near future.

Two standout turf riders

It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, isn’t it? If a jockey is perceived as a turf rider, they’ll get good business on turf horses. If they’re not, they won’t. It’s a self-reinforcing system. In most cases, I’m not sure I trust the stats to correlate with actual turf prowess.

But what got me wondering about that, though, was the way Shaun Bridgmohan, a very smart rider who is a Fair Grounds veteran, handled the Saturday course. Bridgmohan, as much as any rider in the colony, would be familiar with the long-term trend toward superior outside paths, and he rode two turf winners Saturday by perfectly meshing his tactics with the nature of the course.

Riding stats going back to the start of the 2012–13 Fair Grounds meet back up that micro-assessment: In Fair Grounds grass races, there is Rosie Napravnik and Bridgmohan, and then everyone else. During that period, Napravnik has been somewhat amazing, going 49-22-18 from 164 mounts for a massive 30-percent strike rate. Bridgmohan, though, is an excellent 32-30-19 from 136 turf mounts, and his happy return on investment of $2.51 tops Napravnik’s $2.03. No other rider with more than a handful of mounts has won grass races at better than a 15-percent clip, and blind-betting Bridgmohan grass runners, as dumb as that sounds, might be a winning strategy.

Tale of two dirt courses

My heavens, what did the maintenance crew do to the surface for the Starlight Racing card of Feb. 7? I’m not going back to sort out the granular details, but this might have been the fastest-playing main track so far this meet. I’m not sure there was a bias, but staying close to the lead and near the rail seemed, generally, to confer some sort of advantage.

The Friday night sprint races were especially fast, and none more so than race 3, a maiden special weight dash for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Countercyclical, claimed for $25,000 out of a losing Saratoga debut and third in his second start facing Canterbury Park maidens, required last-minute paddock shoe repair and soon the joke went like this: “What kind of shoes did they put on? Rockets?”

At 22-1, Countercyclical bounded to the lead from his rail draw, threw down a hot pace, and powered through the homestretch, winning by more than 12 lengths in a six-furlong time of 1:09.24. Even on a fast track, that was a fast time (faster, in fact, than crack sprinter Delaunay had run winning the Jan. 25 Gaudin Stakes) and Countercyclical earned a 100 Beyer Speed Figure.

That was not the track we saw during Thursday’s races, and it already had begun to slow on Saturday’s card. By Sunday, the main track was producing moderate to slightly slow times.

Watch out for these guys

Trainer Bernie Flint is at it again. A non-factor for years in New Orleans, Flint’s barn sprang to life during the 2011-12 Fair Grounds meet and really has not slowed since. Flint went 5-2-2-0 during the four-day racing week, and his meet record stands at 25-9-5-3. After generating a $2.61 ROI in 2011-12 and a $2.21 ROI in 2012-13, Team Flint’s ROI stands at a robust $2.51 this season.

Steve Margolis, who started slow this season, also has popped to life the last couple weeks, going 14-4-1-3 since Jan. 30, and even scoring a rare win last week with a first-time starter.

And how about Andy Leggio? The 80-year-old, 50-year Fair Grounds veteran has won with four of his last six starters at the meet.