Old-timers Puntsville, Marquez still have plenty left for Prairie Rose Stakes

Hard to say who’s aging more gracefully, 51-year-old jockey Carlos Marquez Jr. or the 7-year-old mare named Puntsville he rides in the $50,000 Prairie Rose Stakes on Thursday night at Prairie Meadows.

Puntsville is the 2-1 morning-line favorite in the six-furlong Prairie Rose after winning three times from four starts last year at age 6. Marquez is in from his Arlington base to ride her because Michele Boyce, who trains the mare for her breeders, Steve and Diane Holland, still has a lot of faith in him. Marquez won his 3,000th race about a year ago and through Sunday’s races was second in the Arlington jockey standings with nine winners from 36 mounts.

Boyce would have raced Illinois-bred Puntsville at home in Chicago had she found a suitable allowance race, but none existed and Puntsville is back out on the road again. Last season, she won sprint stakes at Canterbury Park and Mahoning Valley – but then Puntsville always has been a prolific winner: From 25 career starts, she has a record of 13-5-0. Puntsville probably isn’t quite as fast as she was a couple years ago, but she’s also won her seasonal debut the last two years and gets into Thursday’s race at a feathery 113 pounds.

There are horses that can beat her, however. Annathela and Pretty Greeley are worth considering, and Lake Pontchartrain, already a two-time winner in three starts this year, would be an even stronger contender were she not carrying 123 pounds, giving 10 to Puntsville.

The horse with the best chance to beat the Chicago shipper might in the end be another Chicago shipper, rail-drawn Shanghai Tariff. A 4-year-old trained by Jimmy DiVito, Shanghai Tariff also must saddle 123 pounds, but if Puntsville proves at all ring-rusty at the start, Shanghai Tariff (appropriately named for this historical moment in global economic history) might beat her to the lead. Shanghai Tariff won a pair of Oaklawn Park allowance races earlier this year, and after being raised to stakes competition there ran into the likes of Mia Mischief and Amy’s Challenge, two of the very best older female sprinters in North America. Puntsville has been a good horse for a long time, but never in that class.