Trio of Wednesday allowances attract large fields

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Wednesday marks the first non-stakes day of the Keeneland spring meet, but how can you tell? Three straight allowances to be contested by horses with stakes experience or stakes potential are the anchors of an eight-race card, giving horseplayers a terrific start to a four-day race week.

Races 5 through 7 are those co-featured allowances, each of them with the kind of large fields that characterized the first three programs at this 15-day meet. Field size averaged 10.2 starters per race on opening weekend; the Wednesday trio drew entries of 12, 11, and 10.

Race 6 is the only race scheduled for turf all day, meaning there will not be a Turf Pick 3. Periodic rain was in the local forecast Monday through Wednesday, so there’s a fair chance all eight races will be run on the main track Wednesday.

Purses for the three Wednesday allowances range from $110,000 to $120,000, although those numbers include substantial bonuses restricted to horses registered to the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund.

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First post is 1 p.m. Eastern. Action this week runs through Saturday, with Sunday dark because of the Easter holiday.

Race 5

Varatti figures as a deserving favorite in this first-level allowance for 3-year-olds going six furlongs when returning from a six-month-plus layoff for Todd Pletcher, whose three winners from 11 starts on opening weekend included Nest in the Grade 1 Ashland on Friday. Varatti, a smashing winner of his lone prior start, will break from post 12 with Luis Saez up.

Overbore, winner of the Tremont at Belmont Park as a maiden last June for Wesley Ward, is one of the top challengers in a lineup with remarkable depth.

Race 6

Saez has the call on King Vega, a stakes-seasoned 4-year-old making his North American debut in the care of Graham Motion, whose two wins on opening weekend both came in graded stakes, with Sy Dog in the Transylvania and Spendarella in the Appalachian.

King Vega “for sure” would scratch if this first-level race scheduled for 1 1/8 miles on the turf is moved to the dirt, said Motion, but if it stays on, the British-bred gelding certainly belongs in the favored mix, along with Arabian Prince, Aviano, and Win Worthy. If on dirt, this one becomes a head-scratcher.

Race 7

Stage Raider, a 4-year-old half-brother to 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify, lost all chance in his March 5 comeback at Gulfstream Park when stumbling at the start. He’ll be equipped with blinkers for the first time when having Irad Ortiz Jr. aboard from post 4 in a field of 10 older horses going 1 1/16 miles under a second-level condition.

Chad Brown, who on Saturday sent out Zandon to win the spring-meet showcase, the Blue Grass Stakes, trains Stage Raider for owner-breeder John Gunther. Stage Raider, an eye-catching maiden winner here nearly a year ago with a 96 Beyer Speed Figure, has his stablemate, Winter Pool, as one of his main rivals, along with Portos, Militarist, and Laughing Boy.