Punch Appeal chalk with Bailey in to ride

NEW ORLEANS - Punch Appeal has feasted on listed stakes competition, earning close to $300,000 in purses since she was privately purchased last summer, her success the product of talent and apt management. And her trainer, Steve Asmussen, has picked another plum spot for Punch Appeal, Saturday's $100,000 Tiffany Lass Stakes.

will be heavily favored in the one-mile Tiffany Lass - one of four stakes Saturday at Fair Grounds - especially with Jerry Bailey in from Florida to take the mount, and with only six opponents, none nearly as accomplished as she.

"She's fast, and her numbers are great," Asmussen said of Punch Appeal. "We bought her as a good filly, and she is that."

One horse might stand between Punch Appeal and her seventh victory in 10 starts, the lightly raced but obviously gifted Enduring Will. Enduring Will, with only three starts, and none since Oct. 1, cedes experience to the favorite, and trainer Al Stall hopes to use the Tiffany Lass as a point of departure for bigger and better things.

"I'd have to say she'd need a race, but it's a question of how talented she is," said Stall.

, making her first start around two turns, won the Silver Spur at Lone Star by 10 lengths, but she beat no horse with Punch Appeal's class.

Punch Appeal, who races for Bill Heiligbrodt and Burning Day Farm, comes off a blowout win in the $250,000 Delta Princess, her fifth stakes score of 2004. Punch Appeal also has won stakes at Calder, Turfway, and Churchill, and at distances from 5 1/2 furlongs up to a mile. Bred top and bottom to sprint, Punch Appeal showed at Delta she can race effectively around two turns. One-mile races at Fair Grounds like the Tiffany Lass end at the sixteenth pole, and Punch Appeal, even if she turns out not to be a true distance horse, should have no trouble getting this trip.

"She's run well all over the place," said Asmussen. "Her only disappointing race was the Alcibiades. She just had an off day."

Also entered were the Maryland-based , Fair Grounds maiden winners Eyes on Eddy and Emmy's Storm, former claimer Chubbs Last Call, and The Beter Man Can, who cruised to victory in the statebred-restricted Louisiana Futurity here late last month.

"There's a seven-eighths race at Delta she's going to run at next month," said The Beter Man Can's trainer, Pat Mouton. "We'll get some experience, and hopefully get some money, too."