A Kiss Goodnight in a sweet spot for Johnson

Like a lot of horse trainers right now, Marvin Johnson is performing a balancing act.

Johnson has his stock stabled at Fonner Park. That’s nothing new. He’s been racing at Fonner for literally decades and used to be a major participant there. Recently, Fonner has been Johnson’s late-winter, early-spring launch pad to his main racing grounds, with a base at Indiana Grand and an ability to send horses to other tracks in the Midwest. But Indiana Grand stopped taking horses weeks ago and has indefinitely delayed the start of its 2020 season, leaving Johnson at Fonner and in limbo.

“As soon as they let us, I’m going to leave, but we’re here for now,” Johnson said Monday. “It’s tough figuring out what to do. Do you keep training these things? If you don’t keep training and have them somewhat ready when they say you can come in, well, then you’re going to be in trouble. But do you keep spending money every day and then not be able to go? It’s a catch-22. I think you got to keep a positive outlook and hope for the best.”

Johnson has just three winners from 48 Fonner starters entering this week’s racing, but if a few of his 10 second-place finishers had gone one better, his strike rate would look just fine. Johnson has horses to run in four of Fonner’s nine races Wednesday, including A Kiss Goodnight, who starts in the nominally featured sixth race, a first-level filly-and-mare allowance race carded at six furlongs.

Johnson and others with designs on venues offering larger purses than Fonner’s are loath right now to win a maiden or allowance race and use up a condition. The first-level allowance purse at Fonner, for instance, is only $7,000, four or five times less than a track like Indiana Grand. But with a horse like A Kiss Goodnight such concerns don’t apply. A Kiss Goodnight won her most recent race, on March 30 at Fonner, getting up by a neck in a $3,500 claimer.

“She can go ahead and win that race – fine with me,” Johnson said. “With these $7,000 purses, you can definitely be competitive in there with a horse that likes the track and distance.”

A Kiss Goodnight has won two of her three Fonner starts and has scored three of her five career wins at six furlongs, so she ticks both those boxes. Star Hunter is the 5-2 morning-line favorite and does drop in class from a race open to nonwinners-of-four allowance horses or $10,000 claimers, but Star Hunter ran back-to-back peak races March 6 and March 23 and might not be as sharp right now. Her trainer, Kelli Martinez, has gone a respectable 4-3-4 at Fonner in 18 starts during April but was 18 for 54 between the start of the meet, on Feb. 21, and the end of March.