Kiss to Remember shortens up in Mardi Gras
It’s happened again. The bottom purse level for Fair Grounds stakes races is $60,000, barely an allowance pot at venues like Parx Racing or Aqueduct. But such races at this meet have regularly drawn fields that would credibly fit a Grade 3 race, and the $60,000 Mardi Gras on Tuesday is no exception.
Street Story, the winner of the Grade 3 Victory Ride over the good sprinting filly Miss Behaviour, makes her first start since August. She hooks up with the talented Divine Beauty and Kiss to Remember, and that trio alone makes it a race of six-figure quality, whatever the actual prize money.
There’s an early noon first post Tuesday, which is Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans. The Mardi Gras goes as race 7 of 8 at 2:55 p.m. Central.
A field of six was entered to run six furlongs. Table Three Ten appears to be beyond her best form but is capable of a bounce-back to some degree after throwing a dud last out at Oaklawn. Starship Duchess, lightly raced throughout her career, has generally been a turf horse but won a dirt-sprint allowance race at Fair Grounds when last seen Nov. 28. A win by Lorelei True would qualify as an epic upset.
KEY CONTENDERS
Kiss to Remember (Last 3 Beyers: 76-88-87)
◗ Tom Amoss said after Kiss to Remember won the Pago Hop Stakes over one mile that he planned to keep the 4-year-old filly in one-turn races, but the lure of a $400,000 pot in the 1 1/16-mile Sam Houston Ladies Classic evidently proved irresistible. Kiss to Remember ran poorly there, finishing a distant fifth, but can bounce back while returning to the sort of race, a sprint, that Amoss initially planned to target.
◗ Kiss to Remember has tactical speed at shorter distances like this, and post 6 seems like a perfect draw for her running style.
Divine Beauty (Last 3 Beyers: 83-83-84)
◗ Kiss to Remember outfinished her going one mile in the off-the-turf Pago Hop, but Divine Beauty might have even less interest in running two turns than Kiss to Remember. She is 3 for 3 at this six-furlong trip, and both of her Fair Grounds wins at the distance came by open lengths.
◗ She may be the controlling speed and figures to get first run on Kiss to Remember, but Divine Beauty still has not clearly improved since her two Fair Grounds races one year ago.
Street Story (Last 3 Beyers: 72-92-87)
◗ Divine Beauty beat her by more than six lengths when the two met last winter in the Letellier Memorial at Fair Grounds, but Street Story went on to have the more productive season, winning the $100,000 Instant Racing at Oaklawn before her Grade 3 score in the Victory Ride.
◗ Trained by Steve Asmussen last year, she starts Tuesday for trainer Steve Flint, who trains all the Louisiana-based stock for owner-breeder Carrol Castille’s Whispering Oaks Farm.
◗ Shows only one published work at the Evangeline Training Center, but a clocker is on the grounds there only once a week, on Saturday, and works on other days can go unrecorded.