Four turf allowances featured on Keeneland Sunday card
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Four gets a head start on being a lucky number Sunday at Keeneland, where four turf allowances comprise 44.44 percent of the fourth-to-last card of the spring meet.
The last three of the allowances (races 5, 7, and 9) are linked together in the $3-minimum Turf Pick-3. First post for a nine-race program is 1 p.m. Eastern, with the first allowance going as race 3. Purses range from $110,000 to $130,000 for the four co-features, gaudy figures that include substantial bonuses restricted to registered Kentucky-breds.
After Sunday, Keeneland goes dark for two days before the final three-day stretch of the 15-day meet resumes Wednesday with an eight-race card. The only stakes left at the meet, the Grade 3 Bewitch, is set for Friday, closing day. Churchill Downs begins its spring meet Saturday night.
Race 3
Jarreau adds blinkers after repeatedly knocking on the door in prior attempts to get through this first-level condition for Mike Maker. The 5-year-old son of the late Pioneerof the Nile figures among a core of lukewarm favorites in a 1 1/2-mile race that drew eight older horses, with last-out maiden winners High Deff and McLovin also likely to take their share of tote action.
Jarreau has gone winless in eight starts since Maker claimed him for Three Diamonds Farm last summer, but the gelding has never been worse than fourth in any of those. He’ll be ridden by Tyler Gaffalione, who continues to battle for the riding title with Flavien Prat and Irad Ortiz Jr. as the meet winds to a close.
Race 5
Postnup makes the third start in her form cycle as one of the logical plays in a very well-matched lineup of 10 fillies and mares going 1 1/16 miles under a second-level condition. Trained by Cherie DeVaux, Postnup was a good second under similar conditions in her latest start at Fair Grounds last month. John Velazquez has the call.
Vezpa, a Brazilian-bred returning from a layoff of more than 10 months, is a useful possibility, along with Fair Game and Undisturbed, both in off sharp recent efforts.
Race 7
An oversubscribed field of older horses going 5 1/2 furlongs under a third-level condition makes for arguably the best race of the day. Maven probably will come favored with Irad Ortiz riding from the rail, but the 5-year-old gelding needs to return to the form that earned him a 104 Beyer Speed Figure in a victory here last April. He’s been regrouped by Wesley Ward since finishing well back in three subsequent starts.
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The newly gelded Turned Aside is among the rivals capable of a mild upset in an interesting handicapping exercise, along with Bullseye Beauty and the newly claimed Seven Scents, who now goes for Brad Cox.
Race 9
A Juddmonte Farms homebred named Petricor makes her stateside debut after winning two of four starts in France, and even with her hard-to-gauge form she might well be favored in the day’s finale, facing nine other fillies and mares going 1 1/16 miles under a second-level condition.
Petricor will get first Lasix and Joel Rosario breaking from post 2. The British-bred 4-year-old has been training right along in recent weeks at Payson Park in Florida for her new trainer Bill Mott, who sends her out against a solid group that includes Abscond, a 5-year-old mare looking to snap a 13-race losing skein that followed her victory in the Grade 1 Natalma as a 2-year-old.