Wireless Future could hold the edge over Chip Leader this time
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLENEW ORLEANS – Chip Leader lives in owner-trainer Louie Roussel’s private barn near the western edge of the Fair Grounds property. Cut across a horsemen’s parking lot and the horse path at the half-mile gap on the backstretch, and you can find Wireless Future in the Tom Amoss shed row. And the two 4-year-olds have been on the same schedule for months.
Wireless Future ran fifth and Chip Leader 10th in the Oct. 17 Hawthorne Derby. On Nov. 27 here at Fair Grounds, Chip Leader ran second and Wireless Future third behind the leading grass horse stabled at the track, Chocolate Ride. Both horses were scratched from the Woodchopper Stakes when it was rained off the turf last month, and there they are again, side by side in the entries for the featured second race Friday.
The race is a third-level allowance carded for about 1 1/16 miles on turf and also open to $62,500 claimers, and it drew a field of just seven, including Treasury Bill, a second Roussel horse entered for the main track only. Chip Leader and Wireless Future are the only 4-year-olds in the field and face Bold Rally, Highball, Lewis Vale, and Knights Nation, all 5- and 6-year-olds with less upside than Chip Leader and Wireless Future.
While Chip Leader finished in front of Wireless Future in November, give the edge to Wireless Future this time. Wireless Future tracked from third in his most recent start and was surprisingly far off the early pace at Hawthorne, and he has always seemed best as a free-running, front-end turf-route horse. He won twice on the Fair Grounds course last meeting, and with the portable rail out at 22 feet and so few horses in the race, Wireless Future could take plenty of catching if placed on the lead again Friday.
Roussel said before the Woodchopper that he was concerned that Chip Leader hadn’t worked as sharply as before his runner-up finish behind Chocolate Ride, but Chip Leader has gotten more time to bounce back to his best form again now, and he worked a quick half-mile again Sunday.
Bold Rally could use pace help up front but is unlikely to get it Friday, while Highball makes his first start since Sept. 14 and seemed to lose his edge through the course of his 2015 campaign. Knights Nation and Lewis Vale, both in for the $62,500 claiming tag, exit subpar performances, but both have races not far back in their form to make them contenders Friday, and Treasury Bill will fit well if the race winds up on dirt.
◗ In race 4, a first-level turf-sprint allowance for 3-year-olds, One Mean Man merits a long look. He was fourth last out in a dirt-route optional-claiming race that produced multiple entrants in the Lecomte Stakes, and this one-turn grass race probably suits the colt much better. He was an impressive debut winner at Ellis Park last summer in his only previous try in a conventional turf sprint and did not appear to show his best in a six-furlong grass race on the European-style Kentucky Downs course.