Fair Grounds: Little Bit Trashy heads seven stakes runners for Van Bebber

Trainer Janet Van Bebber will attack Saturday’s closing-day stakes at Fair Grounds with seven starters among the four races, chief among them Little Bit Trashy in the $276,833 Louisiana Quarter Horse Breeders’ Association Sale Futurity.

The futurity is a restricted Grade 1, and the richest of the stakes that together are worth $385,685.

Van Bebber has been known to take down multiple stakes on a card, her latest raid coming at Delta Downs on July 3. She won three of the seven stakes run the final night of the meet, including the $458,180 Lee Berwick Memorial Futurity with Little Bit Trashy. He was a determined, neck winner of the restricted Grade 1.

“He’s truly a professional with everything he does,” Van Bebber said. “It’s helped him make the big bucks. He not only has the talent, but he’s got the right mind.”

Little Bit Trashy, the highest earner in the futurity, was third in the trials Sept. 9. He finished a neck behind The Real Game, whose 350-yard time of 17.52 seconds was tops among 106 trial entrants that afternoon. The race was Little Bit Trashy’s first since July 3.

“I think having a race under his belt is going to help him,” Van Bebber said. “[And] it was so hot leading up to the trials. The break in the weather has helped immensely. We have to walk him with a lip chain right now. We can’t keep him on the ground. He feels so good.”

Van Bebber also has stakes winner Coors Select in the futurity. In the consolation, the $48,853 LQHBA Sale Invitational for horses who posted the 11th to 20th fastest trial times, Van Bebber will start Unquestionable and Tachas Got Game.

The Van Bebber-trained Acorn goes in the $30,000 Fair Grounds Bonus Challenge, a 350-yard race for 3-year-olds and up enrolled in the Racing Challenge Program. Acorn, who won the Grade 1 Challenge Derby Championship last year at Fair Grounds, exits the Grade 2 Prairie Meadows Challenge Championship. He was fourth by three lengths in the 440-yard race run in the mud Sept. 3.

“A big rain came and I thought that racetrack, the nature of the surface, was a little heavy for him,” Van Bebber said. “He didn’t get along with it really well. I don’t think he exerted himself that much.”

Acorn has since been “clearing the shed row,” Van Bebber said, and given his energy as well as his effort last season on the Fair Grounds surface, the decision was made to target the Bonus Challenge.

Dash for Cash trials at Lone Star

Lotta Love for Robyn, the second-fastest qualifier for the $2.4 million All American Futurity who ran fourth in the Labor Day finale at Ruidoso Downs, leads a group of 128 horses set to run in the Dash for Cash trials Saturday night at Lone Star Park. Those with the top 10 times will advance to the Grade 1, $500,000 finale Oct. 8.