Corporate Power and Conquest Warrior both, at one point, were individual betting interests in the Kentucky Derby Future Wager – in 2024. Suffice it to say, things didn’t quite work out for either horse that year.
Conquest Warrior has not raced since finishing a distant fourth behind Fierceness as the second choice in the 2024 Florida Derby. Corporate Power also ran against Fierceness that year, finishing more than 18 lengths behind him in the Travers. He hasn’t started since checking in a well-beaten fifth in the Discovery Stakes two Novembers ago.
Improbably, both horses return from extended layoffs in the same race, the featured seventh on Thursday at Fair Grounds. Both are owned by Courtlandt Farm and both have a new trainer, Steve Asmussen. The pair appears to have worked together several times preparing for their first race in roughly forever.
The Thursday feature, a hodgepodge of a contest, is a second-level dirt-route allowance with a $50,000 claiming option that drew eight entrants. In addition to the two Asmussen charges, the 1 1/16-mile race lured Tarantino, a fixture in graded dirt-route stakes for older horses during the last portion of 2024 and throughout 2025.
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Tarantino this winter joined the Fair Grounds string of trainer Peter Eurton and chunked home eighth, beaten close to 30 lengths, in the Louisiana Stakes last month. That marked his first start since the 2025 Pacific Classic, when Tarantino essentially was eased and led connections to drop the 8-year-old in for a $50,000 tag.
That’s not so precipitous a class move when one considers that Eurton and owner David Bernsen claimed Tarantino for $40,000 in July 2024 and ran him back for that same price before Tarantino demonstrated he could handle stiffer competition. The gelding has some pace, and it’s difficult seeing him go to post nearly as high as his 15-1 morning line, especially with leading rider Jose Ortiz named.
As for the Asmussen duo, don’t count them out strictly because of their long absences. Over the last five years, Asmussen-trained horses returning from a layoff of 425 days or longer have gone 31-7-2-3 while yielding a $2.33 return on investment.
Bedard, shipped in from Oaklawn for trainer Brad Cox, also hasn’t raced in more than a year, but one might do well to eschew all these layoff horses and focus on Original Sin.
Original Sin just raced four weeks ago and makes his fourth start of a spaced-out and encouraging form cycle that began Oct. 30. A Calumet homebred trained by Brendan Walsh, Original Sin ran well in a pair of Churchill one-turn miles last fall before stretching out to two turns last month in a Fair Grounds first-level allowance. It took the bulky 4-year-old a good while to find his best stride, but when he did, he finished with steady intent to post a going-away, one-length score over some decent opposition.
Two races before we see the two refugees from 2024 classics, Reagan’s Honor could wander up to this year’s Kentucky Derby trail if he improves upon a maiden route win on the Lecomte Stakes undercard last month. Reagan’s Honor was good, not great, scoring a front-running victory over solid competition. Trainer Cherie DeVaux would not have chosen to race Reagan’s Honor against older rivals, as is the case Thursday, but had little choice when an age-restricted first-level dirt route allowance failed to fill.
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