Promising Sharp 3-year-olds find themselves stuck

NEW ORLEANS – The good news is that trainer Joe Sharp and owner Brad Grady have two promising 3-year-olds this winter. The bad news is that the two horses, Cool Arrow and Girvin, are stabled at the Evangeline Downs Training Center in Lafayette, La., where Sharp keeps horses who don’t fit into his allotted Fair Grounds stalls.

Girvin, probably the best maiden winner so far at this Fair Grounds meet, was to have raced this weekend in the Lecomte, but Fair Grounds is under a Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry quarantine because of an equine herpes outbreak, and no horses are permitted to ship into the track. Cool Arrow won the Springboard Mile at Remington in his most recent start. He’ll be pointed to a stakes race somewhere, but right now, tracks in other states are not accepting horses stabled anywhere in Louisiana.

“These are two of the nicest 3-year-olds I’ve had since I started training, and now we’ve got no place to go,” Sharp said. “I knew when I took them over there I could be doing the wrong thing, but what can you do? If we miss the Derby trail, we’ll just look forward with them. They’re breezing every week, but I’m in a holding pattern.”

Girvin, by Tale of Ekati, won a maiden sprint race here Dec. 16 in a fast time and earned an 87 Beyer Speed Figure. He beat a first-time starter named Excitations by a neck, and trainer Al Stall said that colt is scheduled to run in a maiden race here early next month.