Ron ready to pull Johnson barn out of slump in Sagamore Sired Stakes

Trainer Marvin Johnson won 137 races between 2013 and 2016 at Indiana Grand. This meet so far has been a struggle, but a horse named Ron can help get the Johnson stable back on the right track Wednesday.

Ron is one of 10 horses entered in the Sagamore Sired Stakes, which along with the Swiftly Sired Fillies Stakes will be run Wednesday at Indiana Grand. Both are six-furlong, $100,000 races for horses sired by Indiana stallions, with the Sagamore restricted to 3-year-olds and the Swiftly for 3-year-old fillies.

Johnson races some of his horses at Fonner Park in the early spring, but many of his runners this meet have run for the first time after a layoff of several months. The barn, in any case, has stumbled out of the gate, winning just one race with its first 30 starters. Ron, however, appears to be in a good spot.

Ron, whom Johnson also owns, ranked among the best Indiana-bred 2-year-olds of 2016, winning a maiden race by more than 14 lengths before performing well in three six-figure stakes to finish off his campaign. Ron, by Mondavi, won the Crown Ambassador, was second in the Hillsdale, and came home a troubled third while trying two turns in the Indiana Futurity.

Ron’s big maiden win came in the third start of his form cycle, and that’s where he is for the Sagamore Sired following a solid second April 21 in a comeback sprint and a third-place finish May 5 going two turns on a sloppy track. Both starts came against older rivals, and Ron need only hold his form to prove a major factor. He is the 2-1 favorite on the morning line.

Here Comes Doc is the 5-2 second choice, but his candidacy rests almost entirely on his most recent start. Here Comes Doc had four modest runs over the winter at Tampa Bay Downs, racing for a claiming tag as low as $16,000, and his four-wide move to win an April 25 Indiana-bred allowance race here came on the best part of an outside-biased surface.

The Sagamore Sired goes as race 7, immediately preceded by the Swiftly Sired Fillies on a nine-race card (first post 2:05 p.m. Eastern) that’s the best so far this Indiana Grand season.

The Swiftly Sired also drew 10 entrants, with Defining Hope and I Came to Praise appearing to be the two most qualified to win.

Defining Hope won two stakes during the 2016 Indiana Grand meet and, following a winter break, came back with a solid second-place finish May 3 while facing older foes in an Indiana-bred sprint allowance with no conditions. Defining Hope will need to work out a trip from post 10 over a surface that last week was not favoring outside paths the way it had earlier in the meet.

I Came to Praise came from Northern California last fall and beat Defining Hope on Oct. 5 in an Indiana Stallion Stakes. I Came to Praise returned with a two-turn dud to cap her 2-year-old campaign but has put together what appears to be a decent workout pattern for her 3-year-old debut.