Full field for wide-open Woodchopper Stakes

The new year’s proximity has everything to do with the massive field in the $75,000 Woodchopper Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds, and handicappers could devote hours to trying to figure out what to do with the race.

The Woodchopper, along with its filly counterpart Saturday, the $75,000 Pago Hop, is 3-year-old restricted, among the last such races of the calendar year, and that’s why there are 14 entrants plus an also-eligible. Handicappers will find a dense thicket of a race upon which it is difficult to throw any light.

The excellent older grass horse Chocolate Ride might provide a path in since Chip Leader and Wireless Future, both back for the Woodchopper, finished second and third behind him Nov. 27 in a Fair Grounds allowance race. Even at less than 100 percent in his first start after a long layoff, Chocolate Ride is a better horse than anything in the Woodchopper, but Louie Roussel, the owner and trainer of Chip Leader, fears that his horse won’t run back to his race from last month. Rousel points to the fast five-furlong work that Chip Leader put in before that start and compares unfavorably with the two workouts Chip Leader subsequently logged, including a five-furlong work in 1:02 last Saturday.

“I didn’t like his last work at all,” said Roussel. “I was looking for something more like 59 again.”

Wireless Future gained on Chip Leader through the race’s final furlong, but this is a horse who might be better suited to pacesetting than running horses down. Wireless Future raced more prominently in his first eight starts than in his last two, and trainer Tom Amoss looks back to a close second from near the pace in the $300,000 Dueling Grounds Derby as the sort of trip he’d prefer to see.

The connections of Almasty, who won the Grade 3 Commonwealth at Churchill last month, skipped this spot in favor of a winter break, though their horse would have been solidly favored, but that’s something to bear in mind regarding Oak Brook.

Oak Brook, a full brother to the young sire Giant Oak, makes his first start since May, but in April at Keeneland, he beat Almasty in an allowance race, then came back to finish a close second in an Indiana Grand stakes to Crittenden, a decent colt who won a listed stakes at about this level Oct. 31 at Del Mar. Oak Brook makes his first start for trainer Steve Margolis, who said he was impressed with Oak Brook’s lone Fair Grounds work for this race.

Granny’s Kitten can win with one of his better performances (though he’s likely to go off well below his 10-1 morning line), but his last two races have been disappointing, and Granny’s Kitten, despite a steady schedule, doesn’t seem to have improved at all since a troubled third in the Penn Mile in May.

Chapter Two has some upside and a decent finishing kick but drew terribly in post 14 and races a distance, one mile, that probably falls short of his best.