Pyron shocks Just Might in Colonel Power
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
NEW ORLEANS – Last of seven at the three-sixteenths pole, Pyron was first under the wire, posting a 19-1 upset over odds-on favorite Just Might in the $100,000 Colonel Power Stakes.
It was a good win for trainer Al Stall Jr. and owner Ken Copenhaver but even bigger for jockey Declan Carroll, who came into the Colonel Power with just four winners from 83 mounts this Fair Grounds meet. Carroll had ridden the surface-versatile Pyron to a third-place finish on dirt in the Thanksgiving Classic and a third in the Richie Scherer Memorial on turf this meet, and Stall, whose tendency is to help people in the racing community, stuck with Carroll, the son of Mark Casse’s assistant trainer David Carroll and longtime exercise rider Kim Carroll, who also works for Casse.
But Declan Carroll, as his parents would, quickly turned the story away from himself and toward the horse and his connections. “It does feel good,” he said. “But this is about the team and the horse.”
Just Might, a seven-time stakes winner during 2021 and on form the best turf sprinter stabled in New Orleans, broke alertly and took mild early pace pressure from Seven Scents before sprinting clear into the turn, going a quarter-mile in a very manageable 22.44 seconds. English import Toro Strike, kept surprisingly close to the pace making his North American debut, tried to run at Just Might around the turn, but jockey Colby Hernandez and Just Might held a clear advantage after cornering into the homestretch. Just Might, going a half-mile in 46.37, still held a 2 1/2-length lead at the stretch call and looked like a winner, but he began faltering at the sixteenth pole, jumping back to his wrong lead, looking for the wire.
Carroll, riding to Stall’s instructions, had just been biding his time, waiting at the back of the Colonel Power field. Pyron had last raced Dec. 26, Stall skipping the Duncan Kenner Stakes last month to aim at this spot. At the three-sixteenths pole, coming across heels to get to the far outside, Carroll put Pyron in the game, and with a five-wide swoop, accomplished on the wrong lead, Pyron was up three strides before the finish, winning by a half-length.
Pyron clocked 1:04.60 for 5 1/2 furlongs over firm turf and paid $41.40 to win, with Gray Attempt a neck behind Just Might in third. Pyron, a 6-year-old horse, is by Candy Ride out of Tapatia, by Tapit. Bred by Winchell Thoroughbreds, Pyron won for the fifth time in 18 races,
She Can’t Sing upsets Stall
She Can’t Sing, a 24-1 shot, rallied up the fence under Jareth Loveberry to post a $51 upset in the Albert M. Stall Memorial Stakes.
Pass the Plate, who made a wide and somewhat early move from last to make the lead in upper stretch, couldn’t quite sustain her run and settled for second, with Abscond, finishing between Pass the Plate and She Can’t Sing, a close third.
It had been 19 starts since She Can’t Sing had tried a route race, but Chris Block, who trains her for Lothenbach Stables, decided to stretch this mare to two turns and got She Can’t Sing an overdue first stakes win.
Loveberry kept his mount to the inside through Adelaide Miss’s moderate early and middle fractions, and as Pass the Plate lugged in after making the front, and Abscond, as usual, unwilling to close the deal, She Can’t Sing surged past the sixteenth pole to win by about a half-length.
She Can’t Sing, a 5-year-old daughter of Bernardini and Distorted Music, by Distorted Humor, was timed in 1:46.22 for 1 1/16 miles on firm turf.