Six stakes races at Fair Grounds Race Course and Slots in New Orleans highlight a 14-race card on January 22 and familiar faces to Canadian racing fans are involved.
Woodbine’s leading trainer Mark Casse starts Rustlewood Farm’s Pappacap (Gun Runner), the current points leader on the Road to the Kentucky Derby with 12, in the $200,000 Lecomte Stakes (G3). Run at 1 1/16 miles, the Lecomte offers ten Kentucky Derby points to the winner, with the rest of the top four earning 4-2-1.
Pappacap was second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) to Corniche at Del Mar and second in the American Pharoah Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita. He won the Grade 2 Best Pal Stakes at six furlongs at Del Mar in his second career race. The Lecomte is race 14 with a post time of 7:20 eastern.
David Anderson’s Anderson Farms, based in St. Thomas, ON, is well represented in two stakes races as co-owner of SUMMER IN SARATOGA who is entered in the Marie Krantz Stakes and Ontario-bred HALO AGAIN, sold by Anderson for $600,000, seeking a second straight stakes win in the $100,000 Colonel E.R. Bradley.
Summer in Saratoga was fresh off victory in Keeneland’s Dowager Stakes (G3) when the mare was sold for $630,000 at Fasig-Tipton’s November sale. Trained at the time by Joe Sharp, Summer in Saratoga (Hard Spun) was sent back to Sharp after Anderson and Narola LLC purchased the mare. In her first and so far only start for her new owners, Summer in Saratoga won the $75,000 Blushing KD Stakes at the New Orleans’ Fair Grounds.
“Obviously you hope it would work out the way it did,” Sharp said of being able to keep Summer in Saratoga in his barn. “At that price range where she was expected to sell, most people would be purchasing her as a broodmare prospect. There was no guarantee you were going to get somebody who would want to continue to race her, let alone trust us to have her again. It really all came together nicely.”
“We actually sent her up to New York,” Sharp said. “She got scratched in the paddock; she kind of sat down behind. So we brought her down to the Fair Grounds. She got herself back together and ran huge the other day. Corey (Lanerie, her regular jockey) happened to be in town. He knows her so well. It all worked out, basically the first start for the new connections to get a win.”
Whether Summer in Saratoga races a full season or races a time or two before being bred would appear up to the 6-year-old mare.
“It’s on a start-by-start basis, Sharp said. “From what I understood from Dave, as long as she’s performing at a level that can add to her resume, then I think he’s content to move forward with racing.” The Marie Krantz is race 10.
HALO AGAIN (Speightstown) won his grass debut in the Dec. 26 Diliberto Memorial Stakes at Fair Grounds. The bay 5-year-old won the Coronation Futurity at Woodbine as a juvenile and the Queenston Stakes as a 3-year-old before finishing a close second in the Plate Trial. He went on hiatus following his 14th-place finish in the Queen’s Plate and was graded stakes-placed in his return last fall at Woodbine. The Bradley Stakes is race 12.
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