Lots of sharp runners in Big Easy

If it’s true that everyone likes a winner, there is plenty for everyone to like about the $50,000 Big Easy Stakes, the featured race Saturday at Fair Grounds.

Four of the seven fillies and mares entered to go 5 1/2 furlongs on turf won their last starts. Kathballu has won back-to-back races, Equation has won three in a row, and Clairenation enters on a four-race streak.

The Big Easy comes up early, race 3 on a 10-race, but the card itself starts later than usual at 3 p.m. Central.

The graded-stakes-placed Kathballu has the highest established form in the Big Easy field and enters in excellent form. She trounced overmatched restricted stakes foes two races ago at Delta Downs and was an easy winner last out in the Pan Zareta at Fair Grounds.

Both of those races, like 20 of Kathballu’s other starts, came on dirt, and the likely favorite has much to prove while switching surfaces. Granted, her lone turf try came in a two-turn race two Novembers ago at Churchill Downs. Kathballu prefers one turn, and late-autumn turf in Kentucky can be testing even for established grass horses, but Kathballu never lifted her hooves that day, finishing last of 14, and she could struggle to produce a baseline performance back on grass and at a distance shorter than her best.

Clairenation, the 3-1 morning-line second choice behind 5-2 Kathballu, appears to hold a couple of better cards. Clairenation has started only five times, all in turf sprints, and since a third-place finish in her debut 11 months ago, no one has beaten her. Clairenation has made the normally arduous climb up the allowance ladder look easy, and moreover, she appears to be the controlling pace Saturday. Jockey Miguel Mena won three stakes last Saturday, and he might be sitting on another stakes winner in Clairenation.

Equation started her career with three wins for trainer Wesley Ward and now makes her first start for trainer Brendan Walsh. She has not beaten competition as strong as Clairenation’s and must deal with a potentially tricky rail draw.

Simple Surprise won a second-level turf-sprint allowance Dec. 20 at Fair Grounds while making her first start since May. She got an excellent trip in that race, but Simple Surprise now has won both of her turf starts and, as a 4-year-old, could still have more to offer.

Boom Bam Bing had a three-race win streak of her own last summer and has not found ideal passage in either of two subsequent losses. She’s in line for a better trip Saturday at fair odds.