Fair Grounds handicapping roundup: Week of Nov. 30

Turf course may play differently this year

Perhaps the most interesting (and in many respects, important) story of the 2013-14 Fair Grounds meet concerns the turf course. A lot of New Orleans lies below sea level, and the ground here generally is boggy and low. It’s a challenging environment in which to maintain a grass course, and things have not gone well on the Fair Grounds turf for several years.

The most significant maintenance in many years was performed during the offseason that ended last week. The old grass was scraped off, some sand was added to the course’s base, a new variety of grass was planted and cultivated, and the drainage system around the far turn – a source of problems in recent seasons – was renovated.

Fair Grounds and horsemen are eager to see how the new grass stands up to regular racing. Meanwhile, horseplayers are interested to see how the new grass plays. This course has long held a reputation for favoring closers, even when the pace is slow, and it was startling to see how well pace horses fared on the lone full day of turf racing, Sunday, Nov. 24, of opening week. The early leader won two of the three turf races on Sunday and finished second (at odds of 33-1) in the third grass race, which was won by a 5-1 pace-presser.

But it’s way too early to make judgments. First, of course, that was one day and three races. Second, the turf was very wet and slow-playing, and in all three races the leaders barely had to do more than gallop while setting the pace. Third, two of the winners, Green Secret and Starship Duchess, were heavy favorites who were going to be formidable in any case. And fourth, the portable rail was set at 25 feet out, a position that can help front-runners. The important thing is to continue monitoring the race shape on the turf course (while taking note of the rail position, which was moving in to 10 feet out for this week’s races) to see if the renovations have produced any substantive change.

Napravnik moving money

Rosie Napravnik has become the perennial leading rider at Fair Grounds. She probably will be leading rider again this meet. But trying to extract betting value from her mounts is going to be a difficult proposition, particularly until the major players from Churchill’s fall jockey colony make their way to New Orleans in early December.

Napravnik rode at Delta Downs on Saturday, so she had only two days of mounts opening week. She had 12 mounts on those two cards, and eight of them were favored. Given her position, Napravnik is going to be riding a lot of favorites, no doubt, but it was clear that the odds on many of these horses were being depressed merely by her presence. This was especially true on the Friday night card, when a large (party-going) ontrack crowd produced a disproportionately large share of the betting pools.

The Napravnik bet-down absolutely has to be accounted for when contemplating the way one is going to approach betting at this meet.

Keep an eye on Broberg

It looks like trainer Karl Broberg, a major presence at many venues in the region, might have a more active Fair Grounds season than he did last year.

Broberg, who runs a lot at Delta Downs in the winter, seemed to dabble at Fair Grounds last season more than making a concerted effort to target races at the meet. Broberg sent out only 38 starters the entire season, but ran four horses during the opening three days of this meet, while making two claims. And since Broberg ranks as the second-leading trainer in the country by wins this year, with 223 through Tuesday, a higher degree of attention to this meet could really change the dynamic in the Fair Grounds claiming ranks.