Take the Elle Z train to Clarksville

The excellent turf sprinter Elle Z has won grass races at four different venues and will be favored to add a fifth to her tally in the $100,000 Clarksville Stakes on Wednesday at Horseshoe Indianapolis.

Elle Z is one of eight fillies and mares entered in the Clarksville, a five-furlong turf dash, and while there’s other pace in the race, you’d better believe this mare is the speed of the speed.

The Clarksville shares top billing Wednesday with another grass dash, the $100,000 William Garrett, this one with no sex restriction. Both races came up tough, owing in part to Churchill Downs canceling grass racing the last several weeks of its spring-summer meeting after the course was deemed unsuitable for use. Horseshoe Indianapolis is coming off a strong Indiana Derby Day on July 9, when they handled $6.9 million on a 12-race program.

As for Elle Z, she should handle her seven foes in the Clarksville, though likely at a considerably lower price than her 2-1 morning-line odds. A winner in nine of her 19 career starts, Elle Z rampaged through the Fair Grounds meeting this past season, winning three turf-sprint stakes and finishing a close second in a fourth. At Keeneland in April she set a wicked pace in a tough renewal of the Giant’s Causeway Stakes, finishing fifth while racing without Lasix in a race won by the high-class filly Campanelle.

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Elle Z gets Lasix for Wednesday’s contest and has been sitting on go for several weeks now, trainer Chris Hartman said, without any place to run.

“We kept waiting for something to come up and it never did work out. She’s definitely ready to go,” Hartman said.

Mitchell Murrill has ridden Elle Z her last 14 starts and comes in from Kentucky to take the call Wednesday. Elle Z, a 5-year-old City Zip mare owned by M Bar O, never has started in a race shorter than 5 1/2 furlongs and should be even tougher at this abbreviated distance.

Miss Majorette and New Boss are the two Clarksville entrants most likely to pick off pace horses tiring late after chasing Elle Z.

Gray Attempt, Hartman’s entrant in the five-furlong William Garrett, isn’t as hit-you-over-the-head obvious as Elle Z but rates as a strong win contender in his own right. Gray Attempt had raced only once on turf, finishing a solid fourth in June 2020, when Hartman and a partnership claimed him for $20,000 in April 2021 at Oaklawn Park. Two starts later, Gray Attempt was moved back to grass and has been a different, better horse ever since.

He, too, wintered at Fair Grounds, winning a second-level allowance race, finishing third beaten less than one length in the Colonel Power Stakes, and running third again in a stakes-class allowance race behind Bound for Nowhere, a recent winner of the Highlander at Woodbine, and Excess Magic, a two-time turf-sprint stakes winner during the ongoing Lone Star Park meet.

Gray Attempt got a three-month break following that allowance start before finishing with a flourish to win his Horseshoe Indianapolis debut, a June 21 five-furlong starter allowance on turf.

“He’s ready to run, too,” Hartman said. “We took him up there and he got into not that easy of a starter race. He had to work for it, and I think he’s ready for more. Hopefully, we’ll have a good day up there.”

Field Day, a 4-year-old Brad Cox-trained gelding, should have a say in the Garrett, too. Field Day started his career in Indiana, scoring a second-start turf maiden win by more than five lengths in November 2020 and confirmed his fondness for the course with a game score in a high-level turf allowance. The field also includes Woodbine shipper Rockcrest, who will try to win the Garrett on the lead and might like the relatively short Horseshoe Indianapolis homestretch.