Sucess Is Racing eyes Brickyard repeat
Sucess Is Racing has won only one race in 2015, but he will try to win his second straight Brickyard Stakes on Wednesday at Indiana Grand and has a decent chance to do so.
Trained by Kim Hammond, Sucess Is Racing has gone 1-3-1 from seven starts in 2015, but the record is better than it looks. In dirt races like the Brickyard, he’s 1-3-1 from five races, and Sucess Is Racing has long been a major factor in statebred-restricted main-track races at Indiana Grand, where his career mark stands at 8-6-2 from 21 starts.
The Brickyard, race 9 of 10, is the last of six $85,000 races for Indiana-breds on Wednesday’s card. The stakes sequence is heavy on 2-year-olds, with the first four stakes all for the juvenile set, including two stakes with a second restriction to horses by Indiana sires.
Sucess Is Racing, one of 12 entrants in the six-furlong Brickyard, finished second last time out to I Like Beer, another Brickyard entrant. But where I Like Beer rushed to the front and got a clear lead in that allowance race, there’s pace this time to keep him honest.
Grandpa Grumpy is the horse likely to run with I Like Beer, and his trainer, Michael Nance, happens to have a second horse in the race, Thank You Kisses, who finished second at 15-1 in the 2014 Brickyard and might be worth a play at another long price Wednesday. He’s on the same racing pattern as last year, exiting a turf-route race, and should be coming late and wide.
Irish Nuggets seeks rebound
Irish Nuggets last raced in a third-level optional claimer Aug. 26 at Saratoga, acquitting herself respectably with a fourth-place finish, and should be a handful in the Merrillville for fillies and mares.
Irish Nuggets was a winner in her most recent start at Indiana Grand, where she has gone 2-1-0 from four starts, winning by 5 3/4 lengths at 8-5 against third-level optional-claiming company July 28. Expect Irish Nuggets to rebound for trainer Ingrid Mason and beat Comforter and Joyous Lady to the finish.
Debut winners will be favored
Brothers Dryden, who earned a 72 Beyer Speed Figure in winning an open maiden race, and Easy Victory, a blowout debut winner over Indiana-breds, figure to be favored in their respective 2-year-old stakes heats, and though it rarely is a good idea to take a short price on a first-out winner jumping up in class – especially if that horse, like these two, won on the front end – it’s hard to get past the chalk in either race.
Brothers Dryden, moreover, got a good outside draw and meets only seven foes in the Hillsdale. He beat 10 in his unrestricted debut win Sept. 9, has since worked back for trainer Joseph Davis, and is the pick at short odds.
Much of the same can be said for Easy Victory, who drew favorably on the outside of her seven rivals in the fillies’ division of the Indiana Stallion Stakes. None of her rivals has come close to the performance level Easy Victory reached in winning by 10 lengths in her debut, and she has gotten plenty of recovery time since that Aug. 8 victory.
The Crown Ambassador, the other division of the Stallion Stakes, also has a potential standout in Derby Express. The latest in a long line of successful Indiana-breds from Sherri and Jeff Greenhill, Derby Express beat open company in a first-level allowance race last out at Indiana Grand after fading to third when on the worst part of the track in the Mountaineer Juvenile.
The City of Anderson, however, looks wide open, with four or five different fillies appearing capable on paper.