Fair Grounds notes: String King may try dirt in Champions Day Classic

NEW ORLEANS – String King won the seventh turf stakes of his career when he captured the Mr. Sulu on Saturday at Fair Grounds by three-quarters of a length, but owner-breeder-trainer Charlie Smith said Tuesday he’s leaning toward running String King on dirt in his next start.

String King will be cross-entered in the $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Turf – which he has won the last two years – and the $150,000 Champions Day Classic, both on Dec. 14, Smith said. Smith hasn’t reached a firm decision about which way to go, but the Classic is the more likely spot. String King hasn’t started on dirt since July 2012; he has two wins from six dirt races, though three of the starts came early in his career, before he had developed into one of the leading Louisiana-breds.

“I’d like to go in the Turf and try and win it three years in a row, but I’m leaning toward the Classic a little bit,” Smith said.

Fair Grounds’s revamped turf course received generally favorable reviews opening weekend (turf races besides the Mr. Sulu on Saturday were scrapped, though three grass races were contested Sunday), but the course had taken rain and was wet and slow-playing for the Mr. Sulu. Smith wasn’t entirely pleased racing String King over it, and he worries that continued wet weather could produce a similar course on Champions Day.

“That was a boggy, soggy quagmire, and I don’t think it’s going to stand much rain,” he said. “Running on turf like that, anything could happen. I just don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

Whatever surface, String King should be in a position to move forward. The Mr. Sulu marked his first start since Sept. 7, and String King probably wasn’t at his peak.

“He didn’t open up and go on with it, like he usually does, and his gallop-out wasn’t as strong as it normally is,” Smith said. “I might have had him a little shy of his best, but he’ll be tighter than hell three weeks from now.”

Smith trains his three horses (two, in String King’s absence) at a training center near Louisiana Downs and still operates an auto paint and body shop there. He went home last weekend but left String King at Fair Grounds, as he has done several times in recent years, under the care of trainer Ken Hargrave.

Coteau Rouge to stay with statebreds

With a Delta debut win and a convincing first-level allowance score on Saturday, 2-year-old Coteau Rouge looks like one of the best 2-year-old Louisiana-breds of 2013, and he figures to be a formidable participant in the Dec. 14 Champions Day Juvenile. But for now, trainer Pat Devereux and owner-breeder Coteau Grove Farm aren’t treating Coteau Rouge as more than a serious prospect for statebred-restricted races.

“I would think two turns is possible for him, but there’s no hurry, really,” Devereux said. “He’ll probably make his first two-turn start at Delta against Louisiana-breds in February.”

Coteau Rouge is by Tale of the Cat and out of the Forty Niner mare Character Builder, making him a half-brother to the good Louisiana-bred stakes filly Little Ms Protocol. After a 2 1/4-length debut score, he won Saturday’s ninth race by more than four lengths, rallying from eighth through a relaxed, outside stalking trip.

“We’ve always thought a lot of him, but he had a lot of maturing to do in his mind, and he’s done that,” Devereux said.

◗ A field of eight 3-year-old fillies is entered in the $75,000 Pago Hop Stakes on turf Friday, with Promise Me More, Eden Prairie, and Always Kitten the leading contenders.

◗ Jockey James Graham had a strong opening three-day week, winning with seven of his 22 mounts to open an early four-win lead over Rosie Napravnik, who went 3 for 14 over the weekend.