Turf – not talent – the catch for Specially
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Specially turned heads this past October making her career debut at Keeneland. Running in the first race on Oct. 5, the filly, then a 2-year-old, beat the talented Arnaud Delacour-trained Lucrezia by more than five lengths and clocked a six-furlong time faster than the one with which Spiced Perfection won the Thoroughbred Club of America Stakes later on the card.
That was the good. The bad came 22 days later, when Specially disputed the pace in the Rags to Riches Stakes and the fell apart, fading to finish seventh by more than 20 lengths in that one-turn mile race.
Owner John Oxley, trainer Mark Casse, and Casse’s Fair Grounds assistant, David Carroll, hoped to run Specially back in a first-level dirt-sprint allowance for 3-year-old fillies earlier this month at Fair Grounds. Those plans had to be scrapped when Specially’s was the only name in the entry box, and seeking a Plan B, Specially was entered in a race at that class level this week at Oaklawn, only to be stuck on the also-eligible list.
Plan C is race 8 Sunday at Fair Grounds, carded for 3-year-old fillies at 5 ½ furlongs on turf and open to first-level allowance horses and $75,000 claimers.
“Turf is the unknown and I’m not really sure about it,” Carroll said Thursday. “But she’s doing well and we need to run her.”
The Casse barn has a second entrant, Western Taffy. Her distant second to Fair Maiden – who was sharp at the time – in the Catch a Glimpse Stakes, a 6 ½-furlong grass sprint last fall at Woodbine, suggests she could be Specially’s equal on grass. Specially is by Tapiture and out of the unraced War Front mare Peace Process. Her stakes-winning older brother Joevia is a dirt horse.
On turf, Call on Mischief may be the most likely winner of the Sunday feature. She was given a chance to stretch out to two turns on dirt in a Dec. 21 first-level allowance and never sniffed runaway speed winner Beautiful Trauma over a sloppy, speed-biased racing surface. Two starts ago she missed by a nose in a Fair Grounds turf sprint, a performance that could land her in the winner’s circle for trainer Mike Stidham, whose barn has been going very well the last week.
