Favorites hard to oppose in Iowa Stallion Stakes

If you like your headline races heavily restricted, the co-features Thursday at Prairie Meadows will be right up your alley.

Races 7 and 8 are divisions of the Iowa Stallion Stakes, though they aren’t really stakes in the true sense of the word and don’t have anything specifically to do with Iowa stallions.

The horses eligible for the races are by stallions who were nominated to these races at a meeting of Iowa breeders last year, making their offspring eligible to run provided a nomination-fee schedule was kept up to date.

Figuring out the race conditions seems more complicated than figuring out the open division of the Iowa Stallion, race 7. Tin Badge is an Iowa-bred who has only raced in sprints, but he still looks very difficult to oppose in this mile and 70-yard race. Part of that is Tin Badge’s own performance level – he’s a borderline Iowa stakes horse – and another part of it is the lack of competitive form displayed by any of his six rivals.

Things look much the same in race 8, the fillies division. One Last Empress is an Iowa-bred who has never raced around two turns in her six starts, but she comes off a good win in the Bob Bryant Stakes at Prairie Meadows, should get some stamina from her dam, an Empire Maker mare, and figures to win this race as an odds-on favorite.