Weekend Winners Club

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Friday, February 15. The Fair Grounds at New Orleans will host 4 graded stakes racing on Saturday to end their 12 race card. It starts with the Mineshaft G3 for 4up on dirt, then the Fairgounds Handicap G3 on turf, for 4up fillies, and back to dirt for the Rachel Alexandra G2 for 3yo fillies, and finally the Risen Star G2 for 3yos. In all, over 140 horses are scheduled to race tomorrow before scratches.
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For 3yos on the Triple Crown Trail, the Risen Star stakes is an important prep race, for a couple reasons. It’s the first 50 point race, so the winner is guaranteed a Kentucky Derby slot if healthy. The runner up is almost guaranteed a berth but will likely need a few more points than the 20 points, which is usually a bubble point quantity in the Kentucky Derby Points System.
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Secondly it’s important to see how the 3yo’s measure up with only 3 months until the big one. Unfortunately, no Risen Star winner has won the Kentucky Derby, including the horse for which the race is named, who did win the Preakness and Belmont in 1988. Others have also gone on to major success, such as 2016 champion Gun Runner, who finished 3rd in the run for the roses, and the next year dominated and became Breeders’ Cup Classic Champion.
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Thus this year’s field of 14 excellent 3yo horses trying to stamp their Derby tickets early. The favorite is and will be War of Will at 5-2 ML, who has been quite impressive after switching to dirt 2 races ago, finally breaking his maiden the 5th try, and then pulling away with the Lecomte G3
here a month ago. In that race, he beat 11 horses, including 5 in this field.
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Also taking a lot of money will be Hog Creek Hustle 8-1, who made a great closing move for 2nd in the Lecomte G3
, and Manny Wah 12-1 who faded to 3rd in that race. Owendale 6-1 will be taking some action after 2 solid OC50’s, the last of which he won, beating 2 others in this field: Frolic More and Gun It.
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So, everyone else in the field is basically a long shot according to the morning line, which makes our options very interesting, but some of that will change. Kingly is at 12-1 ML, and may be only the 4th best 3yo in Bob Baffert’s barn, but that could be saying a lot, because Baffert’s top 3 are in the top 5 of our current Derby Dozen. I expect single digit odds at post time and a solid performance.
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Frolic More 10-1 will also likely take some action since his good closing move to almost catch Owendale last out, and should be a solid long shot to bet. Gun It 10-1 will take action because he’s trained by Steve Asmussen, but fading to 3rd behind Frolic More wasn’t that impressive last time out. I look for horses that don’t get passed in the stretch. Asmussen’s other in the field, Limonite 10-1, has a good habit of passing others in the stretch, and this will be his first race of the year.
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Speaking of which, Mr. Money 12-1 hasn’t raced since the BC Juvenile G1
, where he was passed by only Game Winner and Signalman, still the top 2 in the Derby Dozen. Since then he’s had 3 months to work out and fill in, and I expect some good racing from him this year.
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Plus Que Parfait 10-1 stumbled and got jostled around in the Lecomte G3
and wound up 5th, but before that he made a great closing move to almost snatch the Kentucky Jockey Club G2
title in late November from Signalman. He can’t be written off by any means. Country House 20-1 is a deep long shot and hasn’t beaten anyone of note, but was impressive last 2 races out.

So you can see there are some nice long shot possibilities here. The best double digit morning line long shots in the Risen Star:
Kingly 12-1
Plus Que Parfait 10-1
Mr. Money 12-1
Frolic More 10-1
Limonite 10-1
Super long shot special:
Country House 20-1 has top LP according to the Grid.
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Of course, most of these are nice closing horses, and the race doesn’t appear to have much speed in it on paper. Thus it could just go Kingly, War of Will, Manny Wah, Owendale, and Gun It, with frontrunners and chalk dominating the race. Either way Kingly is the top pick.
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GET THE GRID HERE TO SEE ALL THE PF’S AND OTHER FIGURES FOR ALL SATURDAY’S FAIRGROUNDS RACING.
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The other 3 graded stakes races are all competitive and also offer some nice long shots. The 4 stakes races will have a guaranteed $200k Pick 4 so use the Grid to hit that.
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Click Here for to get The Grid for all major tracks.
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