First Premio triumphs in Colonel E.R. Bradley Handicap
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NEW ORLEANS – Jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. for years wintered at Fair Grounds. This season he decided to spend the winter at Gulfstream Park, but Hernandez still knows his way around the New Orleans track.
As odds-on favorite Great Wide Open battled on a strong pace with Pioneer Spirit, Hernandez kept quiet on First Premio, waiting for what he surely figured was an inevitable pace meltdown. When it started to come on, he urged his mount into action at the top of the long Fair Grounds homestretch, and First Premio had plenty of spark to run down the tiring front-runners and win the $125,000 Colonel E.R. Bradley Handicap by 3 1/4 lengths.
First Premio was racing for the first time since late June, but trainer Mark Casse’s Fair Grounds string, overseen by assistant David Carroll, had the horse ready to roll.
“He was there for me the whole way and all I had to do was give him the right trip,” Hernandez said.
Sir Dudley Digges finished second, a neck in front of 122-pound highweight Great Wide Open, who went off the 3-5 favorite. The winner paid $7.20 and ran about 1 1/16 miles on “good” turf in 1:42.17. The first quarter-mile went in 22.52, and while that fraction was aided by a powerful tailwind, it still was too fast for a route race on the Fair Grounds course. Pioneer Spirit faded to fourth while Teodoro barely participated and was a distant last of five. All Right, Big Changes, Silver Dust, and Team Colors all were scratched.
First Premio made his first two starts in Ireland before being imported and was second here last winter at Fair Grounds in the Woodchopper Stakes at about one mile on turf. First Premio was coming along nicely while based at Woodbine through the late spring but “got really sick” after the June 30 King Edward Stakes, Casse said.
“We never really figured out what happened to him. We played around and finally just sent him home to give him some time.”
First Premio is by Pure Prize and out of the Stravinsky mare, Perils of Pauline. He won for the fifth time in 12 starts.
Wynn Time wins again
Wynn Time landed his third stakes of the Fair Grounds meet, but the 2-5 favorite had to work to hold of 18-1 Control Stake in the $72,750 Duncan Kenner Stakes.
The sprint race was run in heavy wind that slammed into the horses as soon as they left the starting gate. The race’s first quarter-mile split, set by Speightsong with Wynn Time on his heels, went in a slow 23.33 seconds. Wynn Time took over before the top of the stretch but even with a 35 mile-per-hour tailwind in his sails he couldn’t shake off rivals that on paper looked overmatched.
Wynn Time and Marcelino Pedroza drifted out about 100 yards before the wire, then had to slog out the rest of the race, staving off Control Stake’s rally to win by a neck. Balandeen stuck his neck in front of Wynn Time at the stretch call but faded late to finish third.
Wynn Time ($2.80) was timed in 1:10.78 over a fast track. Hugh Robertson trains Wynn Time for owner-breeder John Mentz, who mated Robertson’s stallion, Three Hour Nap, with the Five Star Day mare Five Star Swank to produce Wynn Time. The Illinois-bred 5-year-old gelding ran his record to 11-8-2-1, but will have to produce something better if he’s to contend like he did during 2018 in rich Oaklawn Park sprint stakes.
