Great Wide Open aging like wine for Murphy

The gelding Great Wide Open turns 7 in about a month, but that’s fine – he’s taking over the role of stable star in the Conor Murphy barn from a 10-year-old.

The English import Dimension ruled the modest Murphy shed row (a dozen strong at the moment) from the time he won the Grade 2 Play the King Stakes at Woodbine in 2013. As a late-season 9-year-old, Dimension won the Buddy Diliberto Memorial last December at Fair Grounds before turning in a series of disappointing performances that led to his retirement last summer. Dimension won eight races and earned $621,205 during a career that began in September 2010.

“He’s out on the farm in Kentucky with a few of my other horses,” Murphy, 35, said Sunday. “He was a fine servant.”

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Great Wide Open was bred in Ireland and campaigned there as a sprinter in 2014, 2015, and most of 2016. He joined Murphy’s barn late in 2016 and now has strung together the three best races of his life while making career starts 35, 36, and 37.

On Sept. 1, Great Wide Open finished a strong second in the $681,000 Tourist Mile at Kentucky Downs, and he came back five weeks later to run second at 81-1 in the Grade 1 Shadwell Turf Mile. On Saturday in the featured ninth race at Fair Grounds, he went to the front, backed up the pace under James Graham, and comfortably won a third-level turf allowance over 1 1/16 miles, the longest win of his career.

Murphy said Great Wide Open prefers softer ground and won Saturday despite a firm course. Perhaps more important, Great Wide Open has learned to relax better with age.

“He’s settling much better right now,” Murphy said. “James Graham gets a lot of credit for that. All being well – and he’s come out of the race well – we’ll shoot for the Buddy Diliberto Memorial here in a few weeks’ time.”

Miss Persistent dies in “freak accident”

The 2-year-old Louisiana-bred filly Miss Persistent had to be euthanized Saturday at Fair Grounds after spooking, falling, and striking her head on concrete while being bathed outside trainer Sam David’s barn.

“It was a freak accident,” said David. “She was getting a bath, slid, hit her head, and wound up having to be put down. She’d galloped great, came back to the barn, was fine when she walked outside, but something startled her. Nobody knows what it was. She was normally a very calm filly.”

Miss Persistent hemorrhaged internally and to be put down shortly after the accident.

Owned by Val Murrell and Ted Brandon, Miss Persistent was by Custom for Carlos and out of Valory. She’d won her first two starts – a maiden race at Evangeline Downs in August and an entry-level Louisiana-bred allowance race Nov. 16 at Fair Grounds – by more than seven lengths, and was being pointed to the Louisiana Champions Day Lassie at the time of her tragic demise.

• Three first-level allowances – races 2, 4, and 7 – headline the action on Thursday’s nine-race program.