Focus on stamina in pair of turf races on Ellis card

Distance questions will be key in handicapping Thursday’s nine-race card at Ellis Park, with the most intriguing events on the program including a $120,000 maiden special weight for fillies and mares going 1 1/4 miles on the turf and a $127,000 allowance for older horses routing 1 1/2 miles on the grass.

Coming into Thursday’s third race, Sri Lanka, who has made her three starts at increasing distances for Brendan Walsh, seems to be continuing to ask for more ground. In her most recent outing, the filly went 1 1/8 miles at Churchill Downs and was rallying to be second. Going 1 1/4 miles could suit her well. She comes into the race off a bullet breeze.

Sri Lanka, by Munnings, is from the immediate family of Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Shirocco and several other long-winded European stakes performers.

Later on the card, older horses go 1 1/2 miles on the turf – a distance at which both Jarreau and the stakes-placed Mount Rundle have finished on the board. However, the recent maiden winner King Curlin is intriguing stretching out in distance at a bit of a price for Brittany Vanden Berg.

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King Curlin’s three races on turf, in a career in which he also has competed on synthetic and dirt surfaces, have been some of his best efforts. Two starts back, he finished second in a Keeneland maiden special weight going 1 3/16 miles on the turf. He then scored his breakthrough win in a Churchill Downs maiden at 1 1/8 miles.

King Curlin is a son of stamina source Curlin, whose offspring include Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice and three others to hit the board in that 1 1/2-mile classic. King Curlin’s dam, Blingismything, was a graded winner at a mile on turf, and Grade 1-placed at nine furlongs.

The Thursday and Friday cards beginning this four-day race week set the table for a major weekend of stakes action at Ellis. The Saturday card has six stakes races, three of them graded stakes, on tap, led by the Grade 1, $1 million Stephen Foster. The Sunday card has five stakes, with the richest among them the $275,000 Hanshin Stakes.

The Sunday card officially closes out the Churchill Downs spring-summer meet, which has been conducted at Ellis, now owned by the same parent company, since June 10 to allow more investigation into a spate of equine fatalities at Churchill Downs this spring. Ellis Park’s own scheduled meet opens July 7 and runs through Aug. 27.

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