Plainfield brings versatility to stakes

The secret had leaked even before Plainfield made his career debut April 26 at Indiana Grand.

Plainfield was bet down to 3-2 in an Indiana-bred maiden sprint, and made that price look like an absolute bargain when he buried his rivals by more than 18 lengths in a race run at just 5 1/2 furlongs. Plainfield was far less dominant when stretching out to two turns in a first-level allowance race, but he won that, too, and now he looks like a key contender Wednesday in the Hoosier Breeders Sophomore Stakes.

The Hoosier Breeders Sophomore Stakes, race 7 with a scheduled post time of 4:53 p.m. Eastern, is one of two $100,000 races for Indiana-bred 3-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles on dirt. Its counterpart, race 6, is restricted to fillies.

Plainfield, a son of Flatter, was bred and is owned by John Langemeir and Clara Fenger’s Spooky Hollow Racing, and if he wins the Hoosier Breeders’ Sophomore, it will mark Langemeir’s first stakes victory as a trainer.

Plainfield won his May 30 allowance race by just a halflength, but he demonstrated encouraging tactical versatility, dropping back to sixth under jockey Sophie Doyle before making a sustained winning run. That is pretty strong stuff from a colt who went straight to the front in a short sprint, and Plainfield has come back since his win with a bullet half-mile drill at the Thoroughbred Training Center near Lexington, Ky.

Plainfield is priced at 2-1 on the morning line. Equally appealing at his 8-1 line is Wing and Wheel, who has a win and a nose loss from his pair of twoturn starts this year. In a race filled with pace factors, Wing and Wheel seems comfortable stalking, but he could lose a lot of ground breaking from post 10.

Ron is the 3-1 second choice on the line, but he has not looked like much of a route horse in his starts around two turns, and the recent local sprint stakes he won was more heavily restricted than Wednesday’s race.

The fillies division of the Hoosier Breeders Sophomore has an overabundance of earlypace types entered, and morning-line 7-5 favorite Defining Hope stands to benefit. Defining Hope just raced June 10 but so overwhelmed four foes that day in a heavily restricted Indianabred race that she appeared barely to draw a deep breath in posting an easy victory.

Midnight Boulevard could prove her chief rival, but last year, Defining Hope comfortably beat her in the Miss Indiana Stakes over one mile and 70 yards.