Stakes Purses Raised by $1.2 Million at Fair Grounds

Louisiana's Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots will host 73 black-type races worth a combined $9.7 million during the upcoming 76-day 2023-24 Thoroughbred meet, officials at the New Orleans oval announced Wednesday. The amount is up $1.2 million from last year, but does include $1 million in base purses offered Dec. 2 as Fair Grounds hosts the 25th annual Claiming Crown. That event returns to Fair Grounds for the first time since 2011 with purses ranging from $75,000 to $200,000. Another $25,000 in each race will be available in purse supplements for accredited Louisiana-bred horses.

“In our 152nd year, Fair Grounds will set another record for the richest stakes schedule in Louisiana history,” said Doug Shipley, President and General Manager of the track.

Opening day is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 17, with six $75,000 Louisiana-bred stakes over the season's first two days, while the Road to the Derby Kickoff Day happens Dec. 23 with eight stakes.

“Many deserve thanks for their dedication and efforts to make this happen,” said Fair Grounds Racing Secretary Scott Jones. “Along with our phenomenal Road to the Kentucky Derby series and thriving turf course, this is one more reason why there is no better winter destination for horse racing than New Orleans.”

The highlight of the season, the $1,000,000 GII Louisiana Derby, is set for Saturday, Mar. 23, with 100-50-25-15-10 points awarded to the top five finishers on the Road to the Kentucky Derby. Eight stakes worth a total of $2,625,000 will be carded for the day, including the $400,000 GII Fair Grounds Oaks Presented by Fasig-Tipton, which awards 100-50-25-15-10 points en route to the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks. Last year's runner-up Pretty Mischievous (Into Mischief) rebounded from that defeat with a victory in the Oaks.

“The strong infusion of our sport's top 3-year-olds training and racing at Fair Grounds has been very apparent these past few seasons,” Jones said. “Beginning with the Gun Runner and the Untapable for late-season juveniles, it's proven that our progressive schedule of 3-year-old races for both the boys and girls gives horsemen the proper distances and spacing to prepare their runners for the first weekend in May and beyond.”

Closing day is Sunday, Mar. 24. Regular post time throughout the meet will be 12:45 p.m. CT, with an earlier noon CT first post on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23), Road to the Derby Kickoff Day (Dec. 23), Road to the Derby Day (Jan. 20), Louisiana Derby Preview Day (Feb. 17), and Louisiana Derby Day (March 23).

Click to see the entire Fair Grounds 2023-24 stakes schedule or the first Condition Book.

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Claiming Crown Returns To Fair Grounds

The 2023 Claiming Crown will be staged for the first time since 2011 at the Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots in New Orleans on Saturday, Dec. 2, the National HBPA and the TOBA said in a joint release early on Thursday.

The event will feature eight races totaling $1 million in base purses, headlined by the $200,000 Claiming Crown Jewel.

Eric Hamelback, CEO of the National HBPA said, “The Claiming Crown was designed to celebrate our hard-knocking, unsung heroes of the turf. What better place–especially for our 25th running–than New Orleans?”

The deadline to make horses eligible for the Claiming Crown is November 18, with entries to be taken November 25. Click here for Eligibility Request Forms.

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Beverly Park Grinds Out Continent-Topping Win No. 13

Beverly Park (Munnings), scored his 13th win of the year in his 28th seasonal start Monday in the sixth race at Mahoning Valley Race Course.

With a little more than a month left in 2022 and his next closest competitors all five victories behind him, Beverly Park has now assuredly clinched the title of North America's winningest Thoroughbred based on victories for the year.

Beverly Park's number of starts also leads the continent, and given this horse's penchant for performing well under a steady workload, the 5-year-old starter-allowance stalwart might not yet be finished racing before the condition books close on 2022.

In his typical force-the-issue, grind-it-out fashion, the 7-10 favorite hounded the pacemakers from the outside in the six-furlong sprint restricted to horses who have started for a claiming tag of $8,000 or less over the past two calendar years.

Beverly Park took over at the head of the lane under jockey Yan Aviles, got headed in midstretch, then dug in determinedly to power past a stubborn rival to win by a length in 1:12.28.

Beverly Park was claimed for $12,500 Aug. 5, 2021, by current owner/trainer, Norman Lynn Cash, whose horses race under the name Built Wright Stables.

Beverly Park has not started for a tag since being claimed, feasting exclusively on starter-allowances, optional claimers in which he was not entered for a tag, and in the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express on the Claiming Crown card two weekends ago.

In the span between Cash's claiming him and Monday's win, Beverly Park is now 20-for-36 with $465,628 in purse earnings (roughly 37 times that original claim investment). His lifetime record stands at 23-7-4 from 45 starts.

Beverly Park has been eligible for some lucrative starter-allowance spots. But because improved horses who once ran for low claiming tags generally scare away entrants for those restricted races, Cash has had to hit the road his stable star to extend his winning ways.

So far in '22, Beverly Park has raced at Oaklawn, Charles Town, Turfway, Laurel, Mahoning Valley, Keeneland, Monmouth, Belterra, Churchill, Thistledown, Delaware, Colonial and Timonium.

No North American Thoroughbred had won more than 12 races in an entire calendar year since 2011, when Rapid Redux ran the table with a 19-for-19 record.

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For Blue-Collar Claimers, Black-Type Thanksgiving Feast

The Week in Review by T.D. Thornton

The annual Claiming Crown races were two weeks ago. But a surprise black-type feast for blue-collar campaigners took place over Thanksgiving weekend, when horses once claimed for tags as low as $10,000 and $16,000 ran away with three of five stakes at Laurel Park, and an 8-year-old gelding bought last year for $10,000 topped a blanket-finish trifecta of previously claimed sprinters in the GIII Fall Highweight H. at Aqueduct.

The relic known as the Fall Highweight–in which nominees are assigned weights scaled several notches above today's norms–is very much a throwback concept. So it was only fitting that the 109th edition of this six-furlong sprint was won by an old-school, powerhouse grinder under a 130-pound impost.

Greeley and Ben (Greeley's Conquest), who tied for second-winningest horse in North America in 2021 with 11 trips to the winner's circle, scored his seventh win this season Nov. 26. That runs his lifetime record to a hefty 23-7-2 from 39 starts.

This earner of $882,698 has been an overachiever since the outset. Written off at 94-1 odds in his Oct. 15, 2016 debut at Keeneland, Greeley and Ben just missed, running second, beaten a head.

Proving the effort was no fluke, he won start number two, and even though he didn't progress to stakes as a juvenile or sophomore, he kept company at allowance levels against contemporaries who eventually ran in the 2017 GI Kentucky Debry and future editions of the Breeders' Cup.

Although Greeley and Ben was a six-time winner by the start of 2021, there were no takers the first two times the strapping bay showed up for a $10,000 tag at Oaklawn Park. This was likely because of the gelding's precipitous drop out of a $32,000 claiming win at Churchill Downs. Was the downward plunge in class by then-trainer John Ortiz a red flag or a bluff?

Trainer Karl Broberg was willing to gamble $10,000 to find out, and when he dropped a slip on behalf of his own outfit (End Zone Athletics) the third time Greeley and Ben was entered at that level (after previously winning and running second), he had no idea the gelding would blossom into a three-time stakes winner for him, bankrolling roughly 45 times that initial claiming investment in purses at Oaklawn, Prairie Meadows, Remington Park, Delta Downs, Fair Grounds, and Sam Houston.

Broberg's stunning run with Greeley and Ben would last until Apr. 24, 2022, when he dropped the gelding from Grade III sprint company into a $62,500 optional-claimer at Oaklawn. Pounded to 2-5 favoritism, Greeley and Ben won again that afternoon at Oaklawn, but was claimed by trainer Melton Wilson.

After running second and fourth in stakes this past spring and summer at Monmouth and Delaware for trainer Bonnie Lucas, Greeley and Ben was auctioned for $80,000 at July's Fasig-Tipton sale for horses of racing age.

The gelding spent time in the barns of David Jacobson and Jeffrey Englehart through the fall, and while Greeley and Ben had to get used to new surroundings every few weeks, his output remained consistent: Claimed for $40,000 out of a win at Saratoga Sept. 4, he then ran second while not entered for a tag in an optional $55,000 claimer at Laurel Oct. 8.

It is the last four weeks, though, that are emblematic of what Greeley and Ben is all about. On Oct. 29, he finished a very credible fourth–beaten only three-quarters of a length at 20-1 odds–in the GIII Bold Ruler S. at Aqueduct, coming off Lasix (as required in New York stakes races) for the first time in his career after making all previous 36 starts on it.

Twelve days later, on Nov. 10, Greeley and Ben got wheeled back in a $10,000 starter allowance, also at Aqueduct, and won as the crushing 1.5-to-10 fave.

Then on Saturday, firing back in 16 days, the gelding was more or less dismissed by bettors at 7-1 odds in the Fall Highweight. Jockey Manny Franco patiently saved ground at the fence, and when Greeley and Ben cut the corner for home, he was full of run.

The competition counter-punched, though, and Greeley and Ben tenaciously had to reclaim the lead not once, but twice in deep stretch after getting headed. He prevailed by a neck in a furious photo finish with the two favorites right behind him, separated by head bobs. The 98 Beyer Speed Figure for the no-Lasix stakes score represented a career best for the 8-year-old.

Darryl Abramowitz owns Greeley and Ben, and the Fall Highweight was the first graded stakes victory for New Jersey-based conditioner Faith Wilson, who has only been a licensed trainer for 18 months.

Meanwhile, in Maryland…

Friday's 5 3/4-length trouncing of the $75,000 Politely S. for Maryland-breds at Laurel was administered by another on-the-rise claimer once bought for $10,000.

Fille d'Esprit (Great Notion) is now 12-for-23 lifetime, and has won five stakes so far in 2022, including open-company races while winning her division of the MATCH series and the $100,000 Maryland Million Distaff. Since that Aug. 21, 2020, claim, the 6-year-old mare has been trained by John Robb and owned by the partnership of C J I Phoenix Group and No Guts No Glory Farm.

Saturday at Laurel featured three open-company stakes for $100,000, and two them were won by relative bargains at the claim box.

Swayin to and Fro (Straight Talking) captured the Safely Kept S. by 3 1/4 lengths at 6-1 odds for Baxter Racing Stable and trainer Mario Serey, Jr. The win came exactly six months to the date of that outfit claiming the 3-year-old filly for $16,000 out of an 8 1/4-length maiden romp. Including the win on the day she was claimed, Swayin to and Fro is now 6-for-10 on the year, with two stakes victories.

Armando R (Blame) was another runner you could have bought out of a winning effort for $16,000, which is exactly what current owner Ronald E. Cuneo and trainer Damon Dilodovico did a year ago, on Nov. 28, 2021. This 6-year-old gelding has since won through his '2x' allowance condition, and in the span of the past 60 days has won two hundred-grand listed stakes at Laurel, the off-grass Japan Turf Cup S. at 10 furlongs in the slop Oct. 1, and the Richard Small S. over nine furlongs on fast dirt Nov. 26.

Six for the road…

News quiz: Can you name the jockey who won six races in one day of racing over the holiday weekend? In case you need a hint, his last name contains only four letters and ends in a Z.

If you guessed the mid-Atlantic based Angel Cruz, you are correct.

But Cruz is probably not the first jockey you thought of. You'd also be correct if you guessed Luis Saez, whose six wins at Churchill Downs on Saturday rocketed him to the top of the meet standings there and to the top of the national news cycle.

No disrespect to the world-class Saez, but Cruz rarely gets much ink in the press, which is why we're highlighting him here.

Plus, Cruz's feat was a little more unique because he had to hit the road to earn his six-pack.

On Friday afternoon, Cruz, who is currently second in the Laurel standings, won the $75,000 Howard and Sondra Bender Memorial S. aboard Maryland-bred Alwaysinahurry (Great Notion).

Cruz then commuted roughly 90 minutes west to ride under the lights at Charles Town Races, where he swept races two through six (and barely lost the eighth race, running second with his only other mount of the night).

Serving up a fitting moniker for a horse who just completed a six-pack, the name of Cruz's final winner Friday was Always Drinking (Speightster).

Monday walk in the 'Park'

It wouldn't seem right to complete a column about the upward mobility of lower-level claimers without getting in a mention about Beverly Park (Munnings), the continent's winningest horse so far in 2022. The 5-year-old will be aiming for win No. 13 in his 28th start of the year Monday when he goes up against starter-allowance company in the sixth race at Mahoning Valley.

That Nov. 28 race is restricted to horses who have started for a claiming tag of $8,000 or less over the past two calendar years. Beverly Park won a N2L $5,000 claimer by 15 lengths at Belterra Park back on July 8, 2021. Next time out, he was claimed for $12,500 by his current owner/trainer, Norman Lynn Cash, whose horses race under the name Built Wright Stables.

Beverly Park has not started for a tag since being claimed, feasting exclusively on starter allowances, optional claimers in which he was not entered for a tag, and in the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express on the Claiming Crown card two weekends ago.

In the span between Cash's claiming him and a second-place finish at Charles Town Nov. 19, Beverly Park is 19-for-35 with $453,688 in purse earnings (roughly 36 times that original $12,500 claim investment). His lifetime record stands at 22-7-4 from 44 starts.

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