Keeneland starts the first five-day race week of its fall meet with an eight-race Wednesday card featuring an appealing allowance, and a carryover after some surprises on Fall Stars weekend.
Although plenty of favorites did win, Saturday’s featured Grade 1 Coolmore Turf Mile was won by Rhetorical, who returned $21.18 – the average winning payout for the 11-race marquee card was $11.13 – and Gin Gin returned $38.64 in upsetting Sunday’s featured Grade 1 Spinster. Heading into Wednesday, there’s a carryover of $50,245 in the Super High Five, a wager Keeneland offers on the last race of the day with at least seven betting interests.
The last race on Wednesday is a $130,000 turf allowance for 3-year-olds and up who have never won twice other-than, or who have never won three races. The race has 11 entrants but course condition and any surface change bear watching. Dry weather in Lexington left the course very firm for opening weekend but there was a 95 percent chance of rain in the area for Tuesday.
Trainer Brendan Walsh engineered the upset with Gin Gin, one of his five wins on a solid opening weekend. He’ll have one of the favorites in the Wednesday feature in Cameo Performance, who will be getting class relief as he drops out of stakes company for the first time in well over a year. The gelding was a stakes winner at Ellis Park last year, and third, beaten less than a length, in the Grade 2 Muniz Memorial Classic earlier this year at Fair Grounds. He exits a third in the restricted Tapit Stakes at Kentucky Downs.
Cameo Performance would likely handle some cut in the ground. His Ellis stakes win came on a course rated good, and earlier this year he turned in a decent effort in the Grade 1 Turf Classic at Churchill Downs on a course officially rated good but on the softer side after taking plenty of rain. He was eighth, beaten only three lengths, while yielding late in the 1 1/8-mile race that was slightly longer than Wednesday’s 1 1/16 miles.
Mountain Bear is another whose back class makes him a threat. He was multiple Grade 1-placed while shipping from Europe to the United States for Aidan O’Brien, including a third in last year’s Coolmore Turf Mile at Keeneland to standouts Carl Spackler and More Than Looks. Mountain Bear is now with Keeneland-based Wesley Ward, who also had a strong opening weekend.
Mountain Bear, a famously fractious runner – who once drew gasps from the Keeneland crowd for balancing on a single hind foot as he reared vertically – was gelded this summer. He was most recently third in a mile handicap at Kentucky Downs.
Gilded Craken also made his most recent start at Kentucky Downs, just missing by a neck in a 1 5/16-mile allowance/optional-claiming race after setting the pace. Cutting back should suit him.
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