When Quint’s Brew made his long-awaited return in the $100,000 Bender Memorial at Laurel Park last month, Ned Allard was expecting a resurgent victory. Instead, the trainer was left frustrated again when the gelding was boxed in the entire way and had to settle for second.
“We stayed in the pocket from the half-mile pole to the quarter pole,” Allard said. “The rider had his head turned sideways, and I just think he got about as bad of racing luck as you could get.”
This space could have been entirely occupied by three Fair Grounds races.
Golden Tempo smartly won his debut sprinting last month looking like a two-turn stakes horse, but his 8-1 morning-line odds in the Lecomte seem like a pipe dream. Reagan’s Wit’s price will be right in the Colonel E.R. Bradley, and while I’m picking him to win, I don’t have quite enough confidence to tout him.
Instead, we’ll bop around the country, making stops in Maryland and California.
Louisiana
Trainer Steve Asmussen will saddle a pair of millionaires in the $100,000 Colonel E.R. Bradley on Saturday at Fair Grounds, when Lagynos and defending winner Gigante go in what is one of three turf stakes on Lecomte Day.
There are a total of six stakes races on the card. The Bradley, which is a 1 1/16-mile race for 4-year-olds and up, goes on turf alongside the $100,000 Duncan F. Kenner and $100,000 Marie G. Krantz Memorial.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Now that Weigh the Risks has found a home on dirt, it’s time to find out just how far she wants to run.
After winning five of her last six starts, all around one turn, Weigh the Risks will move to two turns for Saturday’s $135,000 Ladies Stakes going 1 1/8 miles at Aqueduct. Inaugurated in 1868, the Ladies is being run for the 154th time on Saturday.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A pair of stakes for older Florida-breds, the Sunshine Turf and Sunshine Sprint, highlight Saturday’s 11-race program at Gulfstream Park. The Turf is a real handicapping dilemma matching a full and extremely wide-open field going 1 1/16 miles. The Sprint features the return of last year’s winner, Damon’s Mound, who figures to go to post one of the shortest-priced horses on the card.
Let’s try this again.
Four weeks ago, Just a Touch was supposed to be at Fair Grounds, overwhelmingly favored to win his first stakes race in the Tenacious. Instead, trainer Brad Cox kept the horse home at Payson Park in Florida. Just a Touch’s last race came in July, and when Cox entered him in the Tenacious, Just a Touch had logged only five works, none farther than a half-mile.
“They enter a week out down there, and I thought, let me just put him in the race,” Cox said. “He never made the trip. I just didn’t think he was quite ready.”
Although the $125,000 Leonatus Stakes on Saturday night at Turfway Park offers no Kentucky Derby points, it has become a significant on-ramp to the classics chase for locally based 3-year-olds.
The one-mile Leonatus kicks off the track’s serious two-turn races for the division, leading to the $175,000 John Battaglia Memorial Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on Feb. 21, awarding points toward the Derby on a 20-10-6-4-2 basis, and the Grade 3, $777,000 Jeff Ruby on March 21, a major prep on the 100-50-25-15-10 scale.
In 2020, her second year training, Cherie DeVaux sent Bayerness out to a sixth-place Kentucky Oaks finish. DeVaux hasn’t had a classic start since, but with two horses to run Saturday at Fair Grounds in the Lecomte Stakes and two more, including favored Atropa, in the Silverbulletday, DeVaux can realistically hope to end that drought.
A fourth-place finish by Vodka Vodka in the Grade 2 Laffit Pincay Jr. Stakes on Dec. 28 at Santa Anita was worth a gamble.
“I wanted to see what the limit was,” trainer and co-owner Aggie Ordonez said.
In his stakes debut, Vodka Vodka finished seven lengths behind the star older horse Nysos in the Pincay at 1 1/16 miles on dirt. There is nothing similar to Nysos in Saturday’s $175,000 Unusual Heat Turf Classic for California-breds at Santa Anita, Vodka Vodka’s next assignment.
