Stablemate could spoil Plensa's quest for second Kentucky Downs stakes win
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When a horse runs the race of his life over the quirky Kentucky Downs course, the plan of attack seems obvious: Get him ready for the next season’s Kentucky Downs meeting.
Take the 4-year-old gelding Plensa, with career earnings of $1.28 million, $1.13 million of which came from winning the Gun Runner Stakes about a year ago at Kentucky Downs. Best believe that the third start of Plensa’s 2026 campaign, the $500,000 Tapit Stakes on Sunday at Kentucky Downs, is meant to be his best start of his campaign.
“He really seemed to relish that course,” trainer Rusty Arnold said. “We’ve pointed him to this race for quite a while now.”
Plensa and 13 others, all drawn inside him, went into the Tapit, carded for 1 1/16 miles and restricted to horses without a stakes win this year. Four horses also are entered in the Tight Spot Handicap on the Saturday card at Kentucky Downs, but in any case, a wide draw isn’t a death sentence in middle-distance races over this turning, undulating course.
Plensa traveled smoothly and comfortably in the Gun Runner, easily the best performance of his 10-race career. The Gun Runner marked the third start of Plensa’s form cycle last summer and followed a decent, though far from spectacular, third-place finish at Saratoga.
Arnold’s adhering to the same pattern – third race of the summer, ship to Kentucky following a useful Saratoga start. Plensa’s came July 11, a better-than-it-looks-on-paper fifth in a second-level allowance.
“He got in his race at Saratoga, which wasn’t a bad race at all, then had two good breezes,” Arnold said.
In-race dynamics, however, could unfold far differently in the Tapit than the Gun Runner, where Plensa rallied from the back of the field into a very strong pace. A lack of speed, and the presence of stablemate Native Runner, could stand between Plensa and another Kentucky Downs win.
Native Runner was gelded over the winter and changed barns between campaigns. Only his last two starts came for Arnold. On June 24, he closed with interest into a tepid tempo and finished an encouraging fifth in a second-level Churchill allowance. And at 78-1, Native Runner ran the best race of his life in the $300,000 Green River Island on Aug. 2 at Ellis Park. Native Runner traveled well from the start in that race and was the only horse really gaining on victorious Brilliant Berti – a high-class performer – at the finish.
“He went into that good and came out of it even better,” Arnold said.
Mercante, a middle-distance horse in a 1 1/2-mile race, ran well for fourth a year ago in the $2 million Kentucky Turf Cup, his lone local start. He was below form with no obvious excuse when sixth in the Green River Island but could wind up setting a slow pace in the Tapit.
“I prefer a target for him, but I think he can do okay alone, too,” trainer Brian Knippenberg said. “I looked at the race and thought maybe it would be best to just go.”
Virtually every horse in the Tapit has at some point in their career run well enough to win the Tapit, and Ancient Rome actually won Kentucky Downs’s most important middle-distance contest, the Mint Millions, way back in 2023. Based in England with trainer Charlie Hills, Ancient Rome returned to America the following summer, finishing third in the Arlington Million and seventh in the Mint Millions. Things have not gone well since, and Ancient Rome comes to Sunday’s contest on an 18-race losing streak dating to his Mint Millions score three years ago.
But Ancient Rome does have a win over the course, and at Kentucky Downs, that is reason enough to come back for more.
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