Fair Grounds handicapping roundup: Week of Feb. 22

Risen Star preview

A few thoughts on the Risen Star Stakes, the most important race run so far this Fair Grounds meet:

◗ There’s a lot of chaff in this 14-horse field. There are five horses I put in the “can’t win” category – Flat Gone, Vigorish, Interchange, Quick Indian, and Xtra Luck. One more horse, Son of the Preacher, sits right on the threshold.

I see three motivating factors for all the bombers: 1) Kentucky Derby fever 2) Ive Struck A Nerve, and 3) Hero of Order. Ive Struck a Nerve won the 2013 Risen Star at 105-1. Hero of Order won the 2012 Louisiana Derby at 109-1. The odds of a super-longshot winning a stakes for 3-year-olds here for the third year in a row are in the millions-to-1 range, but that’s not how people with a 3-year-old who has displayed even a shred of two-turn talent see things.

◗ I sense a good amount of support for Delta Jackpot winner Rise Up. I will let him beat me. Delta is a bullring. Its track surface can be tricky. A lot of horses don’t run to form there, and the characteristics that allow a horse to excel at Delta rarely transfer to more mainstream venues.

The 1 1/16-mile Jackpot mainly is a race for sprinter-milers. The 2012 Jackpot winner Goldencents was anomalous in that he returned to win the two-turn Sham Stakes at Santa Anita and went on to win the Santa Anita Derby, but by year’s end, Goldencents had settled firmly into the category of sprinter-miler.

In the eight editions of the Jackpot as currently constituted, only Goldencents and Rule returned to win a two-turn race after their victory. Here’s a list of the winners and their post-Jackpot record:

2012 Goldencents – First start back won Sham, won Santa Anita Derby, ultimately sprinter-miler
2011 Sabercat – First start back eighth Rebel; no wins since Jackpot
2010 Gourmet Dinner – First start back fourth CashCall Futurity; no wins until July 2012
2009 Rule – First start back won Sam Davis; probably best over a mile
2008 Big Drama – Won seven-furlong Swale, fifth Preakness; sprinter
2007 Z Humor (dead heat) – First start back fifth Sam Davis; next won September 2009
2007 Turf War (dead heat) – First start back ninth Southwest; never won again
2006 Birdbirdistheword – First start back fifth Louisiana Derby; 1 for 13 post-Jackpot record

Here’s the other thing that comes clear: The Jackpot simply hasn’t been a very good going-forward race most years.

◗ Commanding Curve appears to be getting some Risen Star love, too. His maiden win at Churchill was visually striking, but that race on Nov. 30 has not held up well at all. There were 11 behind Commanding Curve and only three have come back to win: Fire Starter won a one-mile Laurel maiden but was crushed last week in the Southwest Stakes, and two other horses returned to win maiden claimers, one on turf. The Nov. 30 race forms the backbone of Commanding Curve’s résumé for Risen Star competitiveness. It seems flimsy.

◗ Hoppertunity wins the gallop-out award among Risen Star entrants. His Jan. 30 maiden win, albeit with a golden rail-skimming stalking trip, seems like the second-most-impressive single performance in the Risen Star field behind Vicar’s in Trouble’s Lecomte, and Hoppertunity galloped out well in front of his foes that day. The problem: No horse has won the Risen Star off a maiden victory, and Hoppertunity is coming back on just three weeks’ rest. I want to like him, but . . .

Suddenly biased surface

Where did that come from? It was two-thirds of the way through the card on Feb. 14 that I realized we were looking at an inside-speed track.

There’s not space here to document all the statistics to support that claim, but if you doubt, I urge you to look at the charts not just for Feb. 14, but for Feb. 15. The inside-speed bias most definitely carried over to Saturday’s card, and please consider when noting the many shorter-priced winners that by Saturday horses were getting heavily bet just because they appeared to be inside speed.

It was starting to get dark by the nightcap, race 10, on Feb. 15, and even as the horse I liked, Crescentcitycowboy, was able to cross and clear from post 7 at odds of 15-1, I was thinking, “You know, this thing might be over by now,” and it was. Stalkers ran 1-2 in that race, and Sunday’s card showed no sign of the prevailing bias.

Two things need to be mentioned therein, however: First, the fact the track could suddenly turn so definitively biased last week suggest we very much need to be on the lookout for a sequel this week, particularly with the big Saturday card upcoming. (Racetracks still can’t seem to resist souping up their surface for a big day.) And second, definitely speed bias or not, it has been awfully, awfully hard for deep closers to win dirt races this meet, a fact that should be held constantly in mind when handicapping here.