Jones finds his barn loaded with stakes runners

It was quite the five-day run for trainer Larry Jones. At Fair Grounds last Thursday, Jones gained a starter for the Risen Star Stakes in Bluff. On Saturday at Sam Houston, he won two stakes, the $400,000 Ladies Classic with Cassatt, and the $50,000 Allen’s Landing with the 3-year-old Exodus. And on Monday at Fair Grounds, Lovely Maria ran her way into the Rachel Alexandra Stakes with a front-running allowance-race victory over the promising Shook Up.

All told, it was six runners, four winners, and one placed horse during the five days, which is in line with the way things have been going for the barn since the calendar flipped to January. Between Jan. 15 and Jan. 27, Jones had a record of 8-3-2 from 16 starters, and since Jan. 1, he had an 11-5-2 mark from 25 starters. There’s really no keeping up with the Joneses.

Four-year-old Cassatt won her third straight race, though it did not come especially easy. On the lead and ahead by 2 1/2 lengths at the stretch call, Cassatt held on to beat Angelica Zapata by just a neck, though she did earn a career-best 96 Beyer. Cassatt - who is back at Fair Grounds in good order, Jones said - will follow the path Jones took in 2013 with Joyful Victory, who won the Sam Houston Ladies Classic and then captured the Grade 1 Santa Margarita at Santa Anita. That race is March 14 this year, and if all goes well, Cassatt will be there.

Exodus, coming off a blowout Fair Grounds maiden win, ran beyond six furlongs for the first time winning the seven-furlong Allen’s Landing by 2 1/2 lengths over Fair Grounds-based Waging War. The race shape was fast early, slow late.

Exodus is out of the good sprinting mare Stop Traffic.

“We’ve been surprised at the quick turn of foot he’s showed leaving the gate," Jones said. "I may try to keep Exodus at one turn for right now."

Bluff, though, is no one-turn horse. By Tapit and out of the El Prado mare Ermine Slippers, Bluff debuted in a Dec. 11 route race at Fair Grounds, finishing a distant fifth as the favorite. Jan. 1, in another maiden route, he had post 11 and suffered a wide trip, finishing eighth of 12. But last Thursday, he looked like a different horse, stalking the early pace, making a big early move to lead on the far turn, and drawing off to win a mile 70-yard race by nearly six lengths. His raw time of 1:43.20 seems fairly strong, but the race received only a 74 Beyer.

“I think we’re going to be shooting for the Risen Star,” Jones said. “He came out of that race so good. He looks like a different horse now, even just galloping.”

Finally, Jones now stands to have two runners in the Feb. 21 Rachel Alexandra, with Lovely Maria joining Silverbulletday Stakes winner I’m a Chatterbox. Lovely Maria set a slow pace in Monday’s allowance race but made the most of her tactical advantage, nearly running the last half-mile faster than the first half to beat Shook Up by 2 1/2 lengths.

Lovely Maria, a Majesticperfection filly owned by Brereton Jones, was making her fifth start. Her first race around two turns came Dec. 14 in the Trapeeze Stakes at Remington, where a wide trip from post 11 dearly cost Lovely Maria. Jones thinks she might have won the Trapeeze with better luck, and has considered her a two-turn horse since he started training her last summer.

“She was a little bit smaller early than some of the other horses we got sent in, but it’s all come together pretty good,” Jones said.