Every race in America should look something like this: an overflow of entries with as many as 14 stakes-caliber starters, no clear-cut favorite, a bettor’s delight. The $50,000 Ladies Turf at Kentucky Downs will start the 2010 Kentucky Cup series the right way, with maybe a half-dozen fillies and mares or more sporting the credentials to make her a deserving winner.
The one-mile race drew 18 entries, although only 14 can run, and it’s anyone’s guess who might be favored, let alone win. Paracaidas, Never Retreat, or Sweet Theresa could emerge a lukewarm favorite, but there are plenty of fringe types who appear equally capable, including My Baby Baby, Si Si Mon Amie, Orchestrator, Seniga, Direct Line, and Lady’s Laughter.
On barn momentum alone, Lady’s Laughter deserves a close look, since trainer Charlie Lopresti is on the most successful run of his 17-year training career. Lopresti won two stakes over the Labor Day weekend, most notably the Grade 1 Forego at Saratoga with Here Comes Ben, and he always has expressed confidence in Lady’s Laughter, who was assigned post 14 with Alex Solis to ride.
“She can run over any kind of surface, and she always lays it out there for you,” said Lopresti.
The Ladies goes as race 7 on the melded 16-race card with Turfway Park.
Turf Dash
Yankee Injunuity was beaten just a head when second as the 2-1 favorite last year in the $50,000 Kentucky Cup Turf Dash (race 10). A year later, the Chicago-based turf-sprint specialist has raced just three times in the interim, but it was a much-needed last out on Aug. 27 – his first race in more than six months – that might get him over the top Saturday when he returns to Kentucky Downs for the six-furlong Dash.
“He was full of run in that last race and didn’t get used up too much,” said trainer and co-owner Jimmy McMullen. “We got a late start on turning him out for this year. He’s come back really well.”
Yankee Injunuity, with E.T. Baird back aboard, will break from post 2 in a field of nine in the Dash. Other logical contenders include a pair of contrasted runners: Z.I. Zipp, a speedy 3-year-old, and Whitley, a late-running 5-year-old exiting longer races.
Due Date and Shore Do, the one-two finishers in a recent overnight handicap at Ellis Park, also merit mention.
