Regally Ready a short price in turf mile

Indiana Grand, except for the rarest occasion, only sees million-dollar horses on Indiana Derby Day. So, consider Friday a rare occasion because millionaire Regally Ready is entered to run on the card.

Regally Ready is one of seven horses in race 7, a one-mile grass race with no conditions, and one of two in the field from trainer Steve Asmussen, who also entered D’cajun Cat. Regally Ready, with Israel Ocampo named to ride, is the 3-5 favorite on the track’s morning line, a price that feels about right.

An 8-year-old gelding, Regally Ready has won 16 of 39 career starts and has a bankroll of $1,660,826, a good portion of that accumulated when he won the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint in 2011. Just 4 at the time, Regally Ready had much more racing left in him, and even last year at age 7, he won 6 of 10 starts with earnings approaching $400,000.

Turf sprints are a thing of the aging gelding’s past, though, and he has mainly been a miler – a good one on many occasions – the last two seasons. Still, it’s fair to wonder just where Regally Ready’s form lies right now. He ended his 2014 campaign by fading to seventh in the Cigar Mile, though he chased the pace on an inside-speed-biased track that day and can be forgiven the loss. But Regally Ready came back flat in his 2015 debut, finishing a tame fifth at even-money in a March 8 turf optional claimer at Fair Grounds.

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Friday’s race marks his first start since then, and while Regally Ready has trained steadily in recent weeks, and on bare form lays over his six prospective Friday foes, bettors clearly should think twice about jumping. For one thing, while Asmussen is having a solid Indiana Grand meet in terms of horse performance, his $2 win return on investment is a bankroll-killing $0.97. In fact, it has been a similar story all year for the Asmussen barn, which had a $1.56 ROI in 2014 but sits at just $1.18 for all starters in 2015.

The Friday feature also could wind up on a wet main track, with better than a 50 percent chance of storms every day late this week in the area. Regally Ready never has started on a wet track, and one doubts he’ll start now, either. Stablemate D’cajun Cat, though, has a win and a third in five wet-track starts, and on dirt, it could come down to him and Perilous Indian, whose connections appear to be hoping for a rain-off.