Pass the Plate will try to run down Alms in Lanerie Memorial

For a $60,000 purse, these days a stakes race isn’t supposed to draw talent like Alms and Pass the Plate, but here we are.

Alms and Pass the Plate are among seven entrants in the Shantel Lanerie Memorial, a $60,000 overnight stakes at Fair Grounds on Saturday carded for one mile on grass. A rainy week in New Orleans is forecast to give way to clear skies Friday and Saturday, and the Lanerie should remain on grass.

Alms, as she comes into her 3-year-old season, has to be rated one of the highest-rated turf fillies in North America. She went 3 for 3 at age 2, winning a turf-sprint maiden race at Belmont in September, the Grade 3 Matron over the same course and distance in October, and capping her season with a dominant victory in the Grade 3 Jimmy Durante, a two-turn mile at Del Mar.

In the Durante, Alms was slightly slow to settle into the first turn but eventually was taken in hand by Paco Lopez, who thinks enough of the filly to travel from Florida to ride her Saturday. A quick first quarter-mile gave way to a very slow middle half-mile, which wound up benefitting horses close to the pace like Alms, who took command in upper stretch and went in to win by 2 3/4 lengths. Laura’s Light finished second and returned in December with a decisive score in the Blue Norther Stakes over one mile on Santa Anita’s turf course.

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Mike Stidham trains Alms for owner-breeder Godolphin, and has been aiming the filly toward the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Oaks next month, which is not to say Alms isn’t ready to win her 2020 debut. She’s 6-5 on the morning line and could leave the gate an even shorter price than that.

Stidham has a second entrant in Trickle In who also has talent. Trained in New York by Jonathan Thomas, Trickle In won a restricted turf-route maiden race in September in her career debut, and on Jan. 17, racing out of the Stidham barn for the first time, she got away with an easy lead on a speed-favoring course and proved much the best in a first-level turf allowance race.

Dominga won well over a lesser Fair Grounds group in an early December turf-route allowance for trainer Brad Cox, who also has Lady Jenneviere in the Shantel Lanerie.

But Pass the Plate rates the best chance to beat Alms and could be worth a play if her win odds wind up anywhere near her 5-1 morning line, though that seems unlikely. Pass the Plate’s connections, Silverton Hill Farm and trainer Paul McGee, felt compelled to give her a chance on dirt last month in the Silverbulletday Stakes, and while Pass the Plate wasn’t hapless there, she looks like a dyed-in-the-wool grass horse. She was third of 12 debuting over a 6 1/2-furlong trip short of her best at Kentucky Downs, beat 11 maidens in a Keeneland turf route and nine first-level allowance foes in a Churchill turf allowance, and in all three of those grass starts comfortably clocked the fastest finishing time. Pass the Plate’s final-time figures look modest, but she possesses an unusually potent closing kick for a young horse, and it just might be sufficient to run down Alms on Saturday at Fair Grounds.