It’s great that the chance of Saturday afternoon rain in New Orleans has steadily diminished through the week. Also great: Fair Grounds’s decision to run the Risen Star, the last of a dozen Saturday races, more than an hour earlier than usual, in daylight rather than under lights. Risen Star I like Golden Tempo quite a bit – liked him in his debut, liked him in the Lecomte, both wins. Look at his light speed figures as a hint of capability rather than a hard cap on his ceiling, but Golden Tempo’s only the third most likely Risen Star winner. Paladin by Saturday night easily could stand as a firm early Kentucky Derby favorite. He has made no mistakes winning a maiden race and a renewal of the Remsen that could in the end prove stronger than its speed figure. Paladin has no quirks and does have ample positional pace. He’s a physically imposing colt who will stay the Derby’s 1 1/4 miles, to say nothing of the Risen Star’s 1 1/8. I have no issue with Paladin other than his price: He’s a likely odds-on favorite. :: Big Action in the Big Easy at Fair Grounds! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Todd Pletcher, interviewed in 2013 for an in-depth Daily Racing Form story about blinkers, had this to say about the commonly used piece of equipment and its application in racehorses: “You look at a bush by the eighth pole, and to you it’s a bush by the eighth pole. To a horse, it’s a panther.” From the look of things, Pletcher’s addition of blinkers might have turned a massive, unfocused 2-year-old named Courting into a panther. Courting shows a purchase price of $5 million. That’s partly because of his Grade A pedigree but also owing to his Classic looks. Courting ran all right in his debut, beat three rivals in a second-out maiden win, checked in a somewhat troubled and fairly encouraging fourth behind Paladin in the Remsen, and headed to Pletcher’s winter quarters at Palm Beach Downs in Florida. The blinkers experiment began with a Feb. 16 workout. We have no public video of that breeze but can watch his drills before and after it. The change in this colt over the last month is striking. With blinkers, Courting has turned from a relatively disengaged worker to a horse who “goes to the pole,” that is, starts off his breeze in the bridle and ready for action. He has shown much better speed around the far turn and a determined focus all the way through his gallop-outs. Gone is his baby fat, replaced by layers of muscle. Pletcher hopes Courting translates morning improvement into a much better early spot in the Risen Star. Paladin looks like the real thing. Courting, at four times the price, feels like the right play. Albert M. Stall Memorial Watch the mare Expensive Queen make her North American debut last April at Keeneland and you will wonder at the five-sixteenths pole how she wins. Expensive Queen had too much ground to close even as she was getting spun wide into the homestretch. But Expensive Queen unleashed a powerful turn of foot that she sustained for a quarter-mile, getting home by a neck. The first-level allowance score so impressed her connections that they shipped the horse to California for the Grade 1 Gamely Stakes. It wasn’t the competition that led to her well-beaten fourth. Expensive Queen wasn’t the same horse as she’d been at Keeneland. Her feet, said trainer Brendan Walsh, were bothering her. She got months off. The Expensive Queen who won her comeback start Jan. 18 at Gulfstream looked like the Expensive Queen we saw at Keeneland. She races so confidently, so relaxed, still has that big kick. Walsh has gotten two more breezes into Expensive Queen. She’s never won a stakes race, but at a reasonable 6-1 on the morning line, she’s set to win this one. :: Celebrating 100 Years of racing at Tampa Bay Downs! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Turf Dash As a bettor, you should gravitate toward rather than shun horses showing poor recent past performances – horses like Rouki. Sure, poor form preceded by poor form gets you nowhere, but competitive races buried beneath dismal showings can get you a long-priced winner. Rouki since he won this very race at Tampa Bay a year ago at 20-1 has shown next to nothing. But this is a lightly raced 5-year-old, and why can’t he get back to his 2025 Turf Dash form following a dirt comeback run last month surely intended as nothing more than a prep for this race? Bad form – but maybe a good bet. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.