Three allowances highlighted on Churchill card
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It would be fun to watch a horseplayer’s reaction to the Sunday overnight at Churchill Downs if they had gone missing the last 10 or 15 years.
What would have been a meat-and-potatoes program in a bygone era is instead a study in the influences of modern gaming, with aggregate purses – fueled partly by the slots-like historical horse racing machines that have proliferated in Kentucky – on a nice-race card adding up to $843,000, or an average of more than $90,000 a race. Imagine the surprise on their face.
For this particular day, three allowances (races 5, 7, and 8) serve as co-anchors, with each worth at least $127,000, including added monies for registered Kentucky-breds. Most horsemen have arranged their stables to try to take advantage of those lucrative bonuses.
Post time for the finale of the first four-day week of the 44-day spring meet is 12:45 p.m. Eastern. Sunshine and a high temperature approaching 90 are in the local forecast. After Sunday, Churchill goes dark for three days before live action resumes Thursday with an eight-race twilight card.
Race 5
An oversubscribed field of filly-mare turf sprinters competing for a maximum purse of $127,000 makes for some fun handicapping, with two of the principals entered off just-miss efforts in a common race held last month.
Only Kidding and Cruz Bay are those 4-year-old fillies who came out on the wrong end of a tight three-way photo in a similar first-level allowances run April 22 over the Keeneland turf. Both will be among the deserving favorites in a well-matched lineup that also has Lady Danae and Bout Time as top contenders.
In all, 16 are on the program (not including four more excluded when entries were drawn Thursday), but only as many as 12 can start.
Race 7
Kitodan, a last-out winner of the Rushaway on the Jeff Ruby Steaks undercard at Turfway Park, comes aggressively spotted by Mike Maker for an optional $80,000 tag when part of an overflow field of 3-year-olds going 1 1/16 miles on the turf.
Kitodan, with Ricardo Santana Jr. riding from post 2, brings a three-race win streak into this $127,000, first-level race and would seem the one to beat, although Freedom’s Way and Double Clutch could have something to say about that. In all, 13 are entered, including the common-ownership entry of St Andrews and Brooklyn Diamonds.
Race 8
Soup and Sandwich, best known for finishing far back in the 2021 Kentucky Derby, has actually rounded back to respectable form and looks as good as any in this $134,000, second-level allowance going 6 1/2 furlongs on the main track.
Trained by Mark Casse for the Live Oak Plantation, Soup and Sandwich will face seven other older horses, with Prime Factor, Violent City, Coltonator, and Divine Leader the other main players.