Scatter Gun to show the way

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Neil Pessin would have driven his mother in from Lexington, Ky., to watch Scatter Gun run Sunday in the featured race at Churchill Downs, but they recently took a longer trip to St. Louis.

“It probably [would] be a little much for her,” Pessin said.

Still, Frances Pessin, 88, will be watching on television when Scatter Gun and jockey Florent Geroux take early command in the ninth of 10 races on a Mother’s Day program that is famously well attended by local families. Scatter Gun is one of eight fillies and mares entered in the $55,000, third-level allowance at 1 1/16 miles on turf.

Scatter Gun, a three-time winner from nine career starts, most recently set the pace before settling for fourth in an April 20 Keeneland allowance won by the stakes-bound Conquest Babayaga.

“That race turned up more like a graded stakes,” said Neil Pessin, whose late father, Arnold Pessin, was an equine veterinarian who built the Thoroughbred Center training facility in Lexington in 1969 and was an ownership partner in Dueling Grounds (now Kentucky Downs) in the late 1980s. “She ran hard that day.”

Pessin said Scatter Gun, a 5-year-old Kentucky-bred mare owned by Loth enbach Stables, “doesn’t have to have the lead, but it seems like she’s always there. I do know this – if they run with her early, they won’t beat her. They might get her beat, but they won’t win either. This mare’s doing good, and I expect her to run real well.”

Queen of the palace, a laterunning second at 22-1 in the same April 20 race, and Sky My Sky, making the third start in her form cycle for Mark Casse, look like the top threats, while Wesley Ward has a couple of fringe players in Mo Knows and Celestial Insight. Miss Mo Kelly will start only in the highly unlikely event that the race is forced off the turf.

One other allowance (race 4) is on the Sunday card that begins at 12:45 p.m. Eastern. It’s a $51,000, first-level dirt route in which Hollywood Handsome, fourth to Girvin in the Louisiana Derby and fifth to Multiplier in the Illinois Derby, will face older horses for the first time.

After Sunday, Churchill goes dark for three days before another four-day race week starts with a Twilight Thursday program. The highlights for next weekend are the Grade 3 Matron and Grade 3 Louisville Handicap, both to be run Saturday prior to the Preakness simulcast from Pimlico.