Lady Attack back after long layoff

NEW ORLEANS - Lady Attack is back at the races, and if she is back to her old self there will be no stopping her in Friday's ninth race, a second-level optional claimer for fillies going about 1 1/16 miles on turf for a purse of $46,000.

Last seen at Saratoga in summer 2007, Lady Attack earned graded-stakes black type in her last two races over the turf there. She finished second in the Grade 3 Lake George and then third in the Grade 2 Lake Placid.

The Lake Placid was her last outing.

"She strained a suspensory and she's rehabilitated it," trainer Neil Howard said. "Those injuries take a lot of time to heal, and you never know how they're going to come back from those injuries, but she's doing well."

With a string of workouts in the last two months, including a turn around the dirt course at the Fair Grounds, Lady Attack looks ready for her comeback race.

"She might be slightly rusty, but we're glad to get her back to the races," Howard said. "And she's training well."

If Lady Attack is not at her sharpest, the Bill Mott-trained Sweet Ransom looks to be the most likely beneficiary. Making her first start in two months, Sweet Ransom finished fourth last time out in a one-mile allowance on the Keeneland turf. She closed to within three-quarters of a length of the winner before running out of ground.

She'll have another sixteenth of a mile to work with here, and that might prove enough turf for her to get the job done.

The wild card in the race is Sweetness 'n Light, who is on the improve and will be making only her second start on the turf. In her first attempt, at a mile at Fair Grounds last January, she finished fourth.

Her last outing was at seven furlongs on the Polytrack at Keeneland, where she just got up in time to win a first-level allowance. The added distance should work in her favor.

In the eighth race, a first-level allowance for Louisiana-bred fillies and mares, Dancing Rebecca comes back to the races. Off five months since winning her maiden at Ruidoso Downs, she starts for the first time for trainer Bret Calhoun. She shows a bullet work at the Fair Grounds.