Karak tight for return despite nearly one-year layoff

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Turf sprints can be a racing secretary’s best friend. Trainers often resort to the grass as a fall-back for horses who just can’t cut it on the dirt, which is a primary reason field size for turf races at any given meet is invariably larger than those on dirt.

And so it goes that Keeneland is using a pair of turf sprints (races 3 and 7) for co-features on the final Sunday of a spring meet fast approaching its conclusion. They’re higher-end allowances, which helps to explain why they drew small-ish fields, but they’ll serve a purpose, especially given that the only main-track allowance in the condition book for Sunday failed to fill.

Indeed, for whatever reasons, entries have been something of a struggle for longtime racing secretary Ben Huffman and his staff at this meet. Through Thursday, with nine of 15 spring programs in the books, field size was averaging 7.87 horses per race, a sizable drop from the 2019 spring meet, when the average was 8.60 (there was no comparable meet in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic). It’s the lowest average for a Keeneland spring meet since Daily Racing Form began tracking the statistic in 1991.

With that, the Sunday turf sprints present some interesting matchups. Race 3 will have Karak, a two-time stakes winner, making her first start in nearly a year, while a trio of 4-year-old geldings exiting the same Fair Grounds race – Star of Kodiak, Kingpin, and Oak Hill – are among the top contenders in race 7.

Karak, with John Velazquez to ride, will break from post 1, facing no more than five other fillies and mares in an $85,000, third-level race at 5 1/2 furlongs over what figures to be firm going. Despite the layoff, fitness should not be an issue, given how the Wesley Ward trainee shows 13 official works since early January, ending with a couple of sharp recent moves over the local course in preparing for her comeback. She figures as a solid favorite in a lineup that includes Catch a Bid (post 3, Luis Saez) and her Ward stablemate Sequin (post 2, Deshawn Parker) as perhaps her most able challengers.

Race 7 has considerably more depth to it as an $83,000, second-level allowance that drew a field of eight older male horses. Star of Kodiak, Kingpin, and Oak Hill find themselves rematched after bunching on the wire as the respective 2-3-4 finishers in a key March 14 race in New Orleans, and they’re joined here by other viable players such as The Connector, Verb, and American Mandate.

First post for a nine-race Sunday card is 1:05 p.m. Eastern, with the local forecast calling for mostly sunny skies and a high of 59.

After Sunday, Keeneland goes dark for two days before the final three-day stretch of the meet runs Wednesday to Friday, with the Grade 3 Bewitch on closing day being the last of 18 stakes. Churchill Downs opens its spring meet Saturday evening.