Weekend GamePlan for Jan. 11, 2020: Picks for Tropical Turf, Marshua's River, and La Canada

You could say there isn’t a lot to choose from on the North American stakes-handicapping front this Saturday, Jan. 11, but that’d be saying too little.

Santa Anita and Gulfstream both have a pair of Grade 3’s, but even the three grass races among this quartet of stakes failed to attract full fields, and somehow the Las Cienegas drew only five entrants.

I’m not close to loving any of these three selections and none will be any sort of price to write home about, but hopefully a modest profit can be cooked up from meager ingredients.

Tropical Turf

This one-mile grass race for older males at least got 10 horses and in a better world would’ve been the place to go price shopping, but I couldn’t make a strong enough case for anyone. Exulting, who cuts back from nine furlongs and comes out of a decent showing in the Grade 2 Fort Lauderdale, held some appeal, but he’s not exactly going to offer boxcar odds and is a 7-year-old who has limited upside, though his turf-racing résumé is light enough he might yet improve on grass.

A Thread of Blue is a short price here facing older horses for the first time, but I still concluded that barring bad luck he’s going to beat this bunch. A Thread of Blue has no serious turn of foot, which might be an issue cutting back to one mile, but my guess is in the final reckoning he’ll better suit races between a mile and 1 1/8 miles than the 1 3/16 miles and 1 1/2 furlongs into which connections were lured by rich purses last year.

He’s well drawn to use his speed or sit just behind a couple other front-running types, and from all 2019 appearances he relishes the Gulfstream grass. He was much the best in a Jan. 4 team workout over the Palm Meadows dirt and should start his 4-year-old campaign running his record to 4 for 4 over the local turf.

Marshua’s River

I fear Magic Star will take way more betting than, on the bare face of things, she deserves in this 1 1/16-mile turf stakes, but that’s kind of part of the deal with Chad Brown-trained fillies, isn’t it?

It’s interesting that Magic Star’s owner, Don Alberto, also has Andina del Sur for this, and if the race were bet like it ought to be, Andina del Sur and Sweet Bye and Bye would be the two favorites. This pair raced against one another in their final two starts of 2019, trading decisions, though Sweet Bye and Bye pretty clearly had the worse trip last time out at Aqueduct. Here, she could get a lovely pressing journey behind apparently overmatched speed Piece by Peace, though a one-mile race might fall more squarely into her ideal distance range.

Andina del Sur, to her credit, won two of her last three starts in 2019 after nibbling maddeningly at the margins for the better part of two seasons.

But really, neither of these two remotely resembles a truly formidable foe, and we saw the outlines of something special from Magic Star in her debut win at Saratoga.

The filly, bet to favoritism there, went from looking hopelessly between at the quarter pole to a sure winner at the eighth pole, and the acceleration she showed while swapping her leads greenly was breathtaking, especially considering she scarcely appeared to be exerting herself. She pulled too hard early and had some traffic when even-money against first-level allowance foes in her second start but had no strong apparent excuse for a disappointing performance.

Brown easily could’ve gone to another first-level allowance this winter, instead he’s aiming to knock out a graded-stakes win off a solid Payson Park work pattern. The somewhat ugly last start has to help the price just a little, and I think Magic Star improves on her debut showing this time around.

La Canada

The hope is Spiced Perfection is favored and Horologist turns up no better than second choice, since I see Horologist as the more likely winner of this squishy two-turn filly and mare dirt stakes.

Horologist was moved into the barn of trainer Richard Baltas shortly before she flopped when cut back to seven furlongs at Keeneland from very encouraging route races at Parx. She’ll be pleased to get back out to two turns here and had a nice recent workout in which she turned back a challenging mate and galloped out energetically.