Saturday's stakes-filled card a gift to horseplayers

So-called Santa Super Saturday was hatched at Fair Grounds years ago with an unfortunate name as part of the general Churchill Downs Inc. trend toward clustering stakes races on single cards, and it has never produced much memorable racing. But out of the blue, Santa Super Saturday 2016 has come up a truly excellent card.

There is an abundance of quantity, with 144 horses entered in 12 races Saturday, and the four stakes for older horses all drew full fields of unusually high quality for mere $75,000 races.

The Blushing K. D., for turf-route females, got 16 entrants, including four also-eligibles, and is headed by Cash Control, who comes off one of the best performances of her career, a four-length win in the Grade 3 Cardinal on Nov. 19 at Churchill Downs. The Cardinal’s second-place finisher, Kitten’s Roar, also is entered in the Blushing K. D., which is loaded with listed to Grade 3 types.

The Blushing K. D.’s male counterpart, the Buddy Diliberto Memorial, has 12 entrants in its main body and three also-eligibles, and it is headed by Fair Grounds favorite Chocolate Ride. Unraced since May, Chocolate Ride won the 2015 Mervin Muniz and has a 6-1-0 record from eight starts on the Fair Grounds turf course. His trainer, Brad Cox, also entered the capable Almasty, who also is entered in the Bonapaw on Saturday. Others of note in the Diliberto are Greengrassofyoming, Pumpkin Rumble, Western Reserve, and Granny’s Kitten.

Besides Almasty, the 5 1/2-furlong Bonapaw also lured Green Mask, who most recently was fifth in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, and multiple graded stakes winner Hogy.

Even the Tenacious, a dirt route for older horses, got 12 entrants, a vast number for this sort of race. That field includes the 3-year-old Dazzling Gem, who was fourth in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby this past spring and exits a Churchill Downs allowance-race win.

The pair of $50,000 races for 2-year-olds, the Sugar Bowl and Letellier Memorial, are unsurprisingly less appealing, but the Sugar Bowl has three decent prospects in Running Mate, Pro Forma, and Keep Talking.