It’s a familiar time of year in New Orleans, Mardi Gras season, and if you have been following the Fair Grounds meet this winter, you’ll be familiar with the cast entered in the $100,000 Mardi Gras Stakes.
The Fat Tuesday feature drew eight entrants, six of whom started Feb. 1 in the Robert Kelly Memorial. That group includes the top five Kelly finishers – Accomplished Girl, Speedy Traveler, Big Trouble, Oeuvre, and Cupids Crush – plus seventh-place Nonviolence.
Familiarity with this cast runs even deeper. While Fair Grounds scarcely cards stakes in some divisions – older-male dirt sprint, older-female dirt route come to mind – the Mardi Gras marks the fourth older filly and mare turf sprint stakes this meet.
Accomplished Girl won the two races in the division that stayed on grass, the Pan Zareta in November and the Kelly, and finished third Dec. 26 in the Nelson Menard Memorial, which was rained off turf. The opposition can take heart in the fact she proved less dominant in the Kelly than she’d been in the Pan Zareta, which she won by 1 1/2 lengths with a 93 Beyer Speed Figure. In the Kelly, Accomplished Girl got a perfect trip under Jose Ortiz but had to work beating pacesetter Speedy Traveler by three-quarters of a length.
While Accomplished Girl’s Beyer dipped to 82, the meaningfulness of raw times and speed figures in Fair Grounds turf races conducted with the temporary rail up is questionable. The electronic eyes of the timing system don’t move when the rail does, creating fractional and final times all over the map. For instance, the half-mile split in the Kelly was 47.34 seconds, more like a route pace than a sprint.
While Speedy Traveler is a 5-year-old, she’d never raced on turf before the Kelly and did well holding second to the accomplished Accomplished Girl. Speedy Traveler drew well in post 8 and ought to once again control the tempo under Jaime Torres.
Big Trouble, third in the Kelly, rates an even stronger chance. The 4-year-old filly is by the excellent turf-sprint sire Kantharos, and in the Kelly she turned back in distance after making five starts around two turns and a sixth over an extended seven furlongs at Kentucky Downs. Big Trouble, trained by Greg Foley, began her career last winter at Fair Grounds finishing second and first in 5 1/2-furlong grass sprints, and in the Kelly she kicked home far faster than the two who beat her to the finish, quickly galloping out far in front.
Mild traffic trouble slightly delayed her move last month, and if Jareth Loveberry can find room to operate this time, Big Trouble might be the one lucky enough to find the baby in the king cake. And if you don’t know what that means, you don’t know Mardi Gras.
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