Control Stake makes first start for new camp in tough turf handicap;

 The high quality of this Ellis Park meeting is on display in Saturday’s feature, a $42,000 handicap at 5 1/2 furlongs on turf that attracted stakes-winners Sharp Art, Control Stake and Latent Revenge. The dozen entrants includes 11-time winner Billy Two Hats needing a scratch to draw in off the “also-eligible” list and nine-time winner Helooksthepart running if the race comes off the turf.

The very speedy Control Stake won last November’s Thanksgiving Handicap at the Fair Grounds and the Houston Sprint Cup in February. After Control Stake finished fourth in a tough Churchill allowance race, trainer Philip Bauer and owner Rigney Racing plucked the 4-year-old colt out of a $50,000 claiming race. This will be their first race with Control Stake, who has never run on turf.

“If he runs well on grass, it’s just more options for us,” said Bauer, who had to scratch Control Stake out of a race at Churchill because of a lung infection. “The horse seems to really like that five-eighths to three-quarters (of a mile) distance. Many of the races come on the grass at that distance. Pedigree-wise he might not belong on the grass, but Richard and Tammy (Rigney) are game to try. If he runs bad, we’ll point toward September with him at Churchill.”

One doesn’t routinely see a recent stakes-winner in good form in for a $50,000 claiming price. Control Stake is a four-time stakes-winner who has won eight of 16 lifetime starts, earning $332,690.

“He’s a 4-year-old that has run hard,” said Bauer, who took Control Stake off the high-percentage owner-trainer combination of Maggi Moss and Tom Amoss. “Not that he didn’t come without any little issues, but we’ve been pretty happy with him overall. We tried to back off him a little bit and he had a really good work the other day, so I thought it was time to stab back at the races and figured this was a good place to start.”

When Control Stake was fourth at Churchill, the winner that day was W B Smudge, who won last week’s $100,000 Senator Robert Byrd Memorial at Mountaineer Park.

“He’s kept good company and run consistent (speed figure) numbers,” Bauer said. “I think that’s what attracted him to us as a claim. Tom does a great job, and every now and then one might slip through the cracks. I think also we had in the back of our minds that we are willing him to give him some time if he needs it. We got rewarded with Channel Marker doing that. Channel Marker showed us right away he needed time. This horse, it looks like we’ll be able to play with him for a while, see where he takes us.”

Channel Marker, off 10 months after being claimed for $62,500, won Belmont Park’s Grade 3 Jaipur in 2015 in his fourth start for Bauer and the Rigneys.

Trainer Greg Foley doesn’t usually run horses back in a week. But he’s doing that with turf sprint-specialist Latent Revenge, who was through early in a $100,000 dirt stakes at 4 1/2 furlongs last Saturday in West Virginia. Before that, Latent Revenge captured an overnight stakes on turf at Churchill Downs. Foley said he’ll scratch if the race comes off the turf.

“I wouldn’t normally do this, but he came out of that race like he didn’t do anything,” Foley said. “I mean, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t run a quarter of a mile, three-eighths. He just didn’t handle that racetrack. He came back, licked his tub. He’s a big, good-looking tough horse anyway. He sure didn’t look tired or drawn up from the ship. I wouldn’t run him if he did. I entered him kind of playing around myself. I had no intention of running him. He just came out of it like it was nothing. I told the owners the day after he got home (from Mountaineer) that 90 percent we’re not running unless he bounces back strong and acts great. And he is. He’s good to go, so we’re going to take a shot at it. Really nowhere else to run him for a while.”

The field also includes Tanner’s Popsicle, third in a tough edition of Ellis’ Don Bernhardt; allowance winner Woodland Walk; eight-time winner Shadow Rock and the stakes-placed Mongol Bull.

“I know it’s good for racing, but it’s been tough as nails down there, every race I’ve entered in,” Bauer said. “You kind of hope to give your horse a little bit of an easier spot during the summer months, but you can’t find them. It’s really crazy.”

The Brad Cox-trained Sharp Art in his last two starts won an Oaklawn allowance race and a $50,000 stakes at Will Rogers Downs. He’s expected to scratch, however, after getting in a starter-allowance race Tuesday at Indiana Grand.

St. Julien hopes Groupie Doll helps rekindle career

Jockey Marlon St. Julien found out on Thursday that his mount, which he’d picked up last-minute at entry time, for last Saturday’s $100,000 Groupie Doll was going to be scratched.

“I didn’t think I was going to ride the race,” St. Julien said recently at Churchill   Downs. “We were driving to Ellis that Saturday morning and ‘Rocco’ (Robert O’Connor III), my agent, called me and said, ‘You’re 90 percent going to ride the Groupie Doll anyway.’”

That’s because Jon Court had to move to Improv, when that filly got in because of another scratch. On race morning, trainer Eoin Harty named St. Julien as the substitute rider on Innovative Idea, upon whom he won by a half-length over Emmajestic.

“Going in, I thought I had just as good a chance as anyone else in the race,” St. Julien said. “I just rode with confidence, and things worked out.”

It was St. Julien’s first graded-stakes victory since he took Keeneland’s 2001 Fayette aboard Connected. The Louisiana product has won, 2,395 races with his mounts earning more than $44.8 million in purses in a career dating to 1989. That includes eight years when he captured at least 100 races, capped by 183 in 1994. But his career also has been checkered by zigging when he should have zagged — or simply stayed put instead of switching around circuits while reeling from personal problems.

Now he hopes the Groupie Doll helps him get entrenched again on the Kentucky circuit, which he left about 10 years ago to ride in Chicago before returning to Louisiana. He returned to the Midwest five years ago, winding up with more business at Indiana Grand. A badly broken leg didn’t help matters.

“It was a long haul,” he said, adding of his close friend Robby Albarado, “Robby and I had been talking. I started coming here, working horses, seeing people.”

Living in Albarado’s house, he rode the winter at Turfway Park to make inroads with Kentucky outfits. “I’d been going back and forth to Indiana, but my business was starting to fall more here. It’s working out. I’ve been working my butt off. I’m not stopping until I get almost there, anyways. It’s starting to pay off.”

Kentucky horses, horsemen, jockeys at Arlington Park

Kentucky will be well-represented on Saturday’s Arlington Million card at Chicago’s Arlington Park. You can watch and bet the stakes-laden card at Ellis Park.

The one to beat in the $1 million Arlington Million is the Mark Casse-trained World Approval, who was second by a neck in Churchill Downs’ Grade 1 Woodford Reserve Turf Classic and comes in off victory in Monmouth Park’s United Nations (G1). He’s ridden by Florent Geroux, who could have a huge day, also riding Skychai Racing’s favored Da Big Hoss in the $300,000 American St. Leger.

Midwest Thoroughbreds’ Roger Brueggemann-trained The Pizza Man tries to regain the form that saw him win the 2015 Million. The 7-year-old gelding has been no better than fourth in three starts this year, including Churchill Downs’ Wise Dan (G2) and Arlington’s Stars and Stripes (G3), which he lost by a total of a neck to Million entrant Greengrassofyoming. That horse was making his first start since being claimed for $62,500 at Churchill by trainer Mike Maker for owner Michael Hui.

The $450,000 Secretariat for 3-year-olds includes Preakness runner-up Cherry Wine, trained by Dale Romans and co-owned by Frank Jones of Louisville; the Robby Albarado-ridden American Derby (G3) winner One Mean Man, trained by Louisville’s Bernie Flint; Turfway’s 2016 Spiral winner (and Kentucky Derby 17th-place finisher as a $200,000 supplemental entry) Oscar Nominated, trained by Maker for Ken and Sarah Ramsey and ridden by Corey Lanerie; the Ben Colebrook-trained Surgical Strike, third in the Spiral and most recently fifth in the Belmont Derby in New York after winning the Arlington Classic (G3).

In the $700,000 Beverly D for fillies and mares, Maker, the Ramseys and Lanerie team with longshot Al’s Gal in the 1 3/16-mile turf race. Al’s Gal was second in Arlington’s G3 Modesty in her last start after winning Churchill’s Keertana. Personal Diary runs for Lexington-based trainer Vicki Oliver off a third in the Ellis Park Turf.

Da Big Hoss, winner of Keeneland’s Elkhorn this spring and last fall’s Kentucky Downs Turf Cup winner, can earn his sixth stakes victory for Maker since being claimed for $50,000. Maker also entered the Ramseys’ Generous Kitten and Rocket Professor, a $25,000 claim who appears to be in to guarantee a good pace in the St. Leger. That could be a problem for Peacock Stable’s Romans-trained O’Prado Ole, who lost the Stars and Stripes by a nose.

Finish lines

Steve Asmussen, Ellis Park’s leading trainer with 12 wins out of 45 starts heading into Friday’s action, was to be formally inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Friday morning at 10:30 ET. Also being inducted was the Asmussen-trained 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra, who beat boys in the Preakness, Haskell and Saratoga’s Woodward. Rachel Alexandra won the Kentucky Oaks by a record 20 lengths for trainer Hal Wiggins and owners Dolphus Morrison and Mike Lauffer before being sold to the late Jess Jackson. The program was to be streamed at racingmuseum.org.

Sobrino fourth in the Aug. 6 Ellis Park Juvenile, has been entered back in an allowance for 2-year-olds Tuesday at Indiana Grand. Sobrino, sold for $1,000 at Keeneland’s 2015 January sale as a “short” yearling, won an Indiana Grand maiden race in his debut for trainer Genaro Garcia.