Keeneland: Cor Cor is the speed of the field in Friday feature

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Friday’s featured ninth race at Keeneland, a $63,000 allowance race, is for 3-year-old fillies that have never won a graded stakes race. But that is not to say that at least a couple entrants don’t have the potential to eventually accomplish that.

Cor Cor and To My Valentine are stakes winners, and the former has already run second in a Grade 3, finishing behind Kauai Katie in the Old Hat Stakes at Gulfstream on New Year’s Day.

Although Cor Cor’s résumé is among the strongest in the field, she comes into Friday’s race not having started since finishing third in the Inaugural Stakes at Presque Isle on May 12, perhaps putting her at a fitness disadvantage.

“She came out with a chip in the knee, not a big deal,” trainer Joan Scott said. “We thought she could come back 100 percent and she has. She’s training very well.”

Like her sire, Smoke Glacken, Cor Cor’s strength is speed. She has never trailed at either of the first two calls in her six-race career, and four times she has carried her speed all the way to the wire to victory, three times in stakes. She is owned by Steve Ballou and Harriet Waldron.

One of those stakes victories came in her only grass start, in the Battle of New Orleans Stakes when she romped by 4 1/4 lengths over yielding ground on Feb. 2 at 5 1/2 furlongs, the distance of Friday’s ninth race.

Favored at 6-5 odds on the morning line over Cor Cor at 8-5 is the Wesley Ward-trained entry of To My Valentine and Shrinking Violet, both owned by Ice Wine Stable. The two fillies each come off two consecutive victories in turf sprints.

Ward said Wednesday he planned to run just one of his two entries, but was uncertain which one.

To My Valentine is the more accomplished of the two, having won the Kentucky Downs Ladies Sprint over older horses in her last race on Sept. 7.

Shrinking Violet, a former maiden $25,000 claimer, also won at Kentucky Downs last month, but in a less-demanding second-level allowance.

Apprentice jockey Dylan Davis has been named aboard both halves of the entry.

Of the rest, the filly most likely to challenge the favorites would seem to be Brown Eyes Blue, a winner of three of her last four starts.

Taptowne breezes

Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile pre-entry Taptowne breezed Wednesday at Churchill Downs for trainer Tim Glyshaw, covering five furlongs in a bullet 1:00.20 on a fast track. Churchill clocker John Nichols caught Taptowne galloping out six furlongs in 1:12.20 and seven furlongs in 1:25.20 under jockey Brian Hernandez Jr.