New Year's Eve tries to run record to 3 for 3 in Allen ‘Black Cat' Lacombe Stakes

California Angel gets back on turf, her preferred surface, after a pair of dirt flops this winter in New Orleans, but New Year’s Eve is the most likely winner of the $75,000 Allen “Black Cat” Lacombe Stakes, the featured eighth race Saturday at Fair Grounds.

Ten 3-year-old fillies were entered in the Lacombe, a two-turn, one-mile grass contest. New Year’s Eve drew post 9, but the temporary turf rail will be set at 17 feet Saturday. When the rail has been that far out this meet, the grass course often has rewarded outside-closing trips.

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Trained by Brendan Walsh for Marc Detampel, New Year’s Eve, a daughter of Kitten’s Joy, has started her career with two wins. Her maiden victory yielded only a 66 Beyer Speed Figure, but the performance was more impressive than the number. Still racing 10th in upper stretch, the filly launched a bold bid through the final furlong and won going away. Stepped up to a tough first-level allowance race on Jan. 29, New Year’s Eve found her late stride again and scored by a neck.

Pearl Earring finished second in that allowance race, running well in defeat, and is back Saturday to try New Year’s Eve again. She is not without a chance to reverse the outcome.

At the eighth pole in the Jan. 29 race, Pearl Earring found herself with a two-length lead, a position she’d never come close to inhabiting in any previous start. Maybe she merely failed to stay, allowing New Year’s Even to get up, but it seemed like Pearl Earring idled once clear.

As for California Angel, she notched an eye-catching debut win late last summer at European-style Kentucky Downs. In October, the California Chrome filly rallied very wide on the Keeneland grass course to get up by a head in the Grade 2 Jessamine. California Angel finished 11th in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf but was beaten just four lengths after breaking from post 14, a near-impossible spot.

She was utterly ineffective racing on dirt in the Dec. 26 Untapable and the Feb. 19 Rachel Alexandra, and it should be noted that California Angel has been going without a break since posting her first published workout July 5.

Mariah’s Fortune, drawn on the rail for trainer Brad Cox, would be a handful if the Lacombe were rained onto dirt. She’s never started on turf. The Cox-trained Lolloping, winner by a neck of a maiden race on the turf at Fair Grounds in her only start, also runs in the Lacombe.

Dreamworker went wire to wire on slow pace defeating Pearl Earring in a turf-route allowance race on Jan. 1, and makes her first start since on Saturday.

This card is chock full of substantive allowance races, with good horses entered in races 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7. First post is 1:05 Central.