Ova Charged a stickout in Bob Wright Memorial, one of three stakes on Saturday card
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
Favorites will be difficult to beat in two Louisiana-bred stakes races Saturday at Fair Grounds, but a slightly better price might be found in the third one.
Ova Charged should make short work of four foes in the $75,000 Bob F. Wright Memorial, the first of the three stakes, while Who Took the Money will take a plurality of win-pool money and all the beating returning to grass in the $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Turf. That leaves the $75,000 Gary P. Palmisano Memorial, which looks the most competitive among the three stakes.
The Champions Day Turf winds up on this card because Fair Grounds wasn’t using its damaged turf course when Louisiana Champions Day came up Dec. 10. The first grass races of the meet were run Dec. 26 with the temporary rail set at 34 feet, which avoids the inside part of the course rendered unusable by a saline-contaminated irrigation well but limits field size to eight. Nine are entered in the 1 1/16-mile Champions Day Turf, with Play Mo the lone also-eligible.
Jeff Delhomme trains Play Mo for his family’s Set-Hut racing operation, which has a much more prominent entrant in Touchuponastar in the field’s main body. An elite talent by Louisiana-bred standards, Touchuponastar has a 4-1-1 record from six starts and went wire to wire impressively winning the Louisiana Champions Day Classic over 1 1/8 miles on dirt, earning a 99 Beyer Speed Figure. Touchuponastar never has started on turf and has been aimed toward a $150,000 race Feb. 4 at Delta Downs. Jake Delhomme, who manages the stable, said Thursday that connections were “keeping all options open at this point.”
Touchuponastar offered value at 5-1 in the Classic, where he got nine pounds from Who Took the Money and had a pace advantage over a surface carrying speed. But if he starts on turf Saturday, the value swings to Who Took the Money.
Front-running tactics play poorly when the Fair Grounds rail is placed so far out on the course, and this time Touchuponastar and Who Took the Money race at level weights. Neither Touchuponastar’s first nor second dam tried turf, and his two siblings to race had no positive grass experience. Sire Star Guitar gets 15 percent winners in dirt routes, 9 percent in turf routes.
Who Took the Money is 6-0-2 from eight dirt starts and has earned nearly $270,000 on the surface, all of which belies the strong chance he’s better on turf. He was fifth with the wrong kind of trip facing open first-level allowance foes at Churchill Downs in his grass debut, won the 2021 Champions Day Turf by almost six lengths, and overcame a difficult pace scenario to win his only other grass race, which came about one year ago at Fair Grounds.
In the Wright, a six-furlong dirt dash for fillies and mares, stand against Ova Charged at your peril. A Brittyln Stable homebred trained by Jose Camejo, Ova Charged is 4 for 4 at Fair Grounds, 5 for 5 at six furlongs, and 5 for 5 facing Louisiana-breds. She already has a pair of easy statebred stakes wins this meet and is well drawn on the outside to get a third at the expense of two solid rivals turning back from routes, Free Like a Girl and Winning Romance.
Nine are entered in the Palmisano, another six-furlong dirt race, with Champions Day Sprint winner Big Chopper and two from the Mark Casse barn in Bron and Brow and Swot Analysis the three most likely winners.
Big Chopper got a great pace setup rallying from 10th to win the Champions Day Sprint by more than three lengths. There’s ample speed signed on Saturday, and 4-year-old Big Chopper, cutting back from seven two-turn races last month, might have found his calling as a one-run closing sprinter.
The track’s morning line pegs Bron and Brow the 3-1 favorite, but stablemate Swot Analysis, 7-2 on the line, is the pick. Swot Analysis carries just 118 pounds, getting six pounds from Bron and Brow and Big Chopper, and where Bron and Brow is drawn inside and subject to a difficult trip, Swot Analysis has an outside draw and can find favorable passage pace-pressing likely leader Mike J. Swot Analysis’s last six starts came on Tapeta or turf, and the last time he raced on dirt he won a six-furlong Fair Grounds race with a 94 Beyer, a number good enough to plunder the Palmisano.
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