Texas Bling a possibility for Lone Star Park Handicap

Texas Bling, best known for his 128-1 win over eventual champion Will Take Charge in the $300,000 Springboard Mile two seasons ago at Remington Park, is possible for the Grade 3, $200,000 Lone Star Park Handicap, said trainer Danele Durham. Texas Bling is now based at Lone Star after wintering at Oaklawn in Hot Springs, Ark., where he was diagnosed with an upper-respiratory infection following a seventh-place finish in an allowance route March 29.

“We were trying to figure out what was going on, and we got a culture done, and he actually had a secondary infection from allergies,” Durham said. “He was allergic to something in Hot Springs.”

Durham said that depending on how Texas Bling progresses in his training, he could start May 26 in the Lone Star Park Handicap.

“When he’s ready, he’ll let me know,” she said.

Texas Bling, who after the 2012 Springboard Mile ran second to Will Take Charge in the 2013 Smarty Jones Stakes at Oaklawn, races for his breeder, Hall’s Family Trust.

Durham is off to a fast start at Lone Star, where she had won with two of five starters through Thursday. She has 25 horses on the grounds, among them stakes winner He Has Bling. He will run in Sunday’s sixth race, while his full sister, Sheridan’s Bling, goes in the third. Both horses, in allowances, race for breeder Hall’s Family Trust. He Has Bling will be stretching back out to a mile, the distance of his win in last year’s Texas Stallion Stakes.

** Cromer, a 4-year-old out of the multiple Grade 1-winning mare Sightseek, will make his career debut in Sunday’s ninth race at Lone Star. He’s a son of Awesome Again.

** Oaklawn was to donate proceeds from a barbecue competition in its infield Saturday to tornado-relief efforts. The contest drew about 50 teams from nine states. Oaklawn was not damaged by the storms that hit Arkansas, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyt.