Swiftsure back off the bench in allowance

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Preceding the Grade 2 Jessamine on an eight-race Wednesday card at Keeneland is an $88,000 allowance (race 7) in which Swiftsure will make his first start since finishing far back as the favorite six months ago in the Lexington Stakes.

“He caught a really nasty track in the Lexington and was really jammed up off it, so we gave him some time off afterward,” trainer Steve Asmussen said. “He’s a horse that showed a lot of potential his first two starts.”

Swiftsure, an Uncle Mo colt who began his career with two easy wins, will have Ricardo Santana Jr. aboard when he faces six other 3-year-olds in the 6 1/2-furlong race.

Also Wednesday, jockey DeShawn Parker will make a rare Keeneland appearance when he rides One Fast Cat in the fifth race. Parker, who has amassed 5,927 wins in a career dating to 1988, is winless in six prior starts here. He was honored with the prestigious George Woolf Award in May as voted upon by his fellow jockeys.

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◗ Combined all-sources handle on the opening three-day weekend at Keeneland was more than $46.8 million, including an 11-race Saturday card that smashed the former record for single-day handle at a fall meet (not counting a Breeders’ Cup card).

The Saturday handle was $20,935,640, easily surpassing the former mark of nearly $18.4 million set at the 2019 fall meet.

◗ These were the handle figures for the first three days of the new Keeneland Turf Pick 3, with the $3 minimum payoff in parentheses: Friday, $132,406 ($536.70); Saturday, $225,524 ($837.60); Sunday, $154,641 ($135). There will no Turf Pick 3 on Thursday because there are only two turf races carded.

◗ Wesley Ward will be looking to make it a clean sweep of the three turf-sprint stakes at the fall meet when he sends out 3-year-old Campanelle as the likely favorite versus older fillies and mares Friday in the Grade 3 Franklin County. A field of 12 is entered in the Franklin County, the ninth of 10 races. Ward won the meet’s first two turf-sprint stakes on opening weekend with Golden Pal in the Woodford and Averly Jane in the Indian Summer.

◗ Let the record show that the final starter in the highly distinguished 42-year training career of Neil Howard was Wing Commander, fifth in the Friday finale. Howard, 72, is now working as a Churchill Downs-based assistant to New York-based Shug McGaughey. His final numbers were 1,256 wins from 6,940 starters and more than $53.8 million in stable earnings.

◗ Several long-priced winners Saturday made for an early pick five that returned $87,391.40 on a 50-cent ticket.