Valadorna headed to New Orleans to prep for 2017 season

Valadorna, who finished a close, somewhat-troubled second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, will have an early 2017 Fair Grounds campaign, trainer Mark Casse said Thursday.

Valadorna is getting a break at the Florida farm of her owner, Stonestreet Stables. Casse said she would be shipped to New Orleans in two or three weeks.

“I don’t see her missing a whole lot of time,” he said.

Valadorna, a homebred daughter of Curlin and the Yes It's True mare Goldfield, finished second while making her career debut in a one-turn mile in September at Churchill Downs and then won a two-turn maiden race at Keeneland in October. In the Breeders’ Cup, she raced in traffic much of the way and stayed on gamely between horses to finish second by three-quarters of a length to Champagne Room.

Since Valadorna comes to Fair Grounds with just one win, she remains eligible for a first-level allowance, and Casse hinted that that is the kind of race in which Valadorna might return, perhaps as a prep for the Rachel Alexandra Stakes in February.

“Of course we’d have liked to have won the Breeders’ Cup, but I don’t mind having a horse come back off a little break and have conditions,” Casse said. “We’ll breeze her a couple times down there and go from there.”

Casse is running a Fair Grounds string for the first time since the 2008-09 season, when he won 11 races with 90 starters during the meet. David Carroll, who became Casse’s assistant after the Fair Grounds meeting last spring, is overseeing the Fair Grounds division.

“We have a lot of horses in Ocala right now, and we’ll decide where we want to go,” Casse said. “I plan on being pretty active down there.”

A previous version of this article misidentified the broodmare sire of Valadorna. It is Yes It's True, not Smart Strike.