Two exiting stakes try facing softer

BOSSIER CITY, La. - Eight promising 2-year-old fillies go seven furlongs Friday in a $26,000 entry-level allowance.

Two of them exit stakes and no doubt will find the company they on Friday friendlier than what they faced in their last starts.

Dawn Before Dawn won on the turf in her debut before a troubled sixth-place finish in the $200,000 Happy Ticket Stakes on the Super Derby undercard last month. Trained by Wes Hawley, she will be making her main-track debut. A High Yield filly, Dawn Before Dawn had a solid half-mile work of 47.80 seconds on the main track between starts, and appears to be well prepared for the change in surface. Don Simington will again be in the saddle.

My Girl Bess makes her first start since finishing off the board in Princess Stakes in mid-July. Trainer Joe Duhon will be adding blinkers to her equipment. A daughter of More Than Ready, she has a high turn of early foot, which jockey Lonnie Meche will try to exploit.

Burress has memorable visit

Jockey Beverly Burress finished first in both the Lady Razorback and Razorback futurities last Saturday, but she lost one of the victories on disqualification.

Burress, a 22-year-old Shreveport native, set a single-season record by a female rider at Oaklawn Park with

30 wins in 2006, and now makes Oklahoma her base of operations. She was at Louisiana Downs to ride Jeri Harper in the Razorback and the fellow Remington Park invader and the 35-1 longshot My Angel's Halo in the Lady Razorback. Both races were for Arkansas-bred 2-year-olds.

Breaking from the outside in the Lady Razorback, My Angel's Halo veered in sharply at the start before Burress got the Southern Forest filly straightened out. They went on to a front-running two-length score, but after claims of foul by Tracy Hebert and Donnie Meche aboard the third- and fourth-place finishers, Burress's mount was disqualified and placed fourth.

"I was so mad," she said. "I had her anchored pretty good, but she was just being a 2-year-old."

Undeterred, Burress came back in the next race, the Razorback for colts and geldings, and made a sweeping move five wide with Jeri Harper ($13.80) to win by two lengths.

"It was still a good afternoon, even with the DQ," Burress said. "For a girl to come down and finish first in both races is something."

Jeri Harper is owned by Becky Burress and trained by Bobby Burress - Beverly's mother and father.