Grade 3 winner Alms returns off long layoff in allowance

Two allowance races top Keeneland’s Thursday card, before a flurry of five stakes end this fall meeting on the Friday and Saturday programs.

Thursday’s sixth race, a $93,000 conditioned allowance for female sprinters, and the eighth race, an $88,000 conditioned allowance for 3-year-olds and up going 1 1/16 miles, are both set to be run on the turf course, as opportunities to run on grass in Kentucky wind down. There will be no turf racing at the November meeting at Churchill Downs due to the ongoing turf course renovation, and winter racing is conducted on Turfway Park’s Tapeta track.

The next opportunity to run on turf in Kentucky will be April 2022 at Keeneland – and local horsemen will be holding their breath that turf races go off as scheduled this week at all. As of Monday, there was an 80 percent chance of rain forecast in the Lexington area on Thursday, and a 70 percent chance on Friday.

:: Shop for Keeneland: Get DRF Past Performances, Picks, and more

Multiple graded stakes winner Alms is the class of the field for Thursday’s sixth race, but is vulnerable as she returns from a layoff of more than a year. Alms, 4, won all three of her starts as a juvenile in 2019, including the Grade 3 Matron Stakes at Belmont and Grade 3 Jimmy Durante Stakes at Del Mar, and then took the Shantel Lanerie Memorial Stakes at Fair Grounds to open 2020. But she flattened out to finish fifth in the Tepin Stakes at Churchill Downs that May and was third after leading on the far turn of the Grade 2 Appalachian Stakes at Keeneland in July 2020, her most-recent start.

Alms has been working sharply for her return at trainer Michael Stidham’s Fair Hill base.

Lead Guitar is getting some class relief after making five straight starts in stakes company. Lead Guitar won four straight races in 2020, including the Floral Park at Belmont and the Autumn Days at Aqueduct. In her first start of 2021, she was declared a non-starter in the Grade 2 Royal North at Woodbine after her slow start was deemed unfair by the stewards. She rebounded to finish second in the Smart N Fancy at Saratoga, but then was eighth in the Grade 3 Franklin County at Keeneland, held in the rain.

Social Chatter, who has never missed the board in five career starts, is on a roll, following a maiden score with allowance wins at Kentucky Downs and Keeneland. A stretch-runner, she would be helped by a stiff early pace.

The most committed front-runner in the race is multiple stakes winner Elle Z, who is coming off a runner-up effort in the Kentucky Downs Preview Ladies Sprint. Elle Z, who breaks from post 9 in the field of 10, has won on dirt as well as turf.

In the eighth race, Dyn O Mite should put his speed to use from the rail. Dyn O Mite crossed the wire first in the Caesars Stakes at Indiana Grand in his last start, but was disqualified to second because his rider hit runner-up Royal Prince with the whip in the stretch.

Own Agenda comes into the eighth race off a close second in a Churchill allowance on June 20. Both the first- and third-place finishers came back to win. Eighth-race contenders Kingmeister and Absam were second and third to a next-out winner at Kentucky Downs on Sept. 6.