Sheppard seeks stakes double

Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard has a decent chance to win his first (and second) stakes race of 2017 when he sends out runners in two Pennsylvania-bred turf stakes Saturday at Parx Racing.

Sheppard, 76, had his first steeplechase winner in 1966 and has been training on the flat nearly as long. He first ran horses at Parx in 1991, when the track was called Philadelphia Park, and has won 11 stakes races there during a long, illustrious career. Sheppard, with 23 winners this year through Wednesday, is on pace to surpass the 39 winners he had in 2016, although none of his 13 stakes starters this year has won.

That can change Saturday at Parx, where an unsettled local

forecast leaves uncertain which surface the $100,000 Crowd Pleaser, for older horses at 1 1/16 miles, and the $100,000 Power By Far, for fillies and mares at five furlongs, will be run.

It is fitting, of course, that Sheppard has an entrant in the Crowd Pleaser, a race named after a horse Sheppard himself trained, and Quick Learner should have a decent chance in a fairly shallow field. Bred and owned by Sheppard, Quick Learner’s three starts all have been Tapeta Footings sprints at Presque Isle Downs, and all have resulted in wins.

Quick Learner beat Pennsylvania-breds in his first two races but easily handled open, first-level allowance competition in his most recent start. The quality is there, but Quick Learner is by Jump Start and out of Smarter Sister: Both parents were dirt horses, and it remains to be seen how Quick Learner handles a turf route.

The race also includes a Kentucky Derby runner, Fast and Accurate, who was 17th in the Derby and most recently finished a distant ninth in the Ohio Derby. Between those starts, Fast and Accurate was a decent fourth over boggy turf in the Grade 3 Arlington Classic, a performance suggesting he’s a prime player Saturday.

Sheppard has Candid Cathy for the Power By Far, and while this race is deeper than the Crowd Pleaser, Candid Cathy has a decent chance. The mare ran in two jump races in 2015 but came back from a layoff the next year reinvented as a synthetic-surface sprinter.

She won four in a row and six of seven at Presque Isle, and while Candid Cathy might have bumped up against her ceiling in finishing sixth in the $100,000 Satin N Lace last out, that was an open race, and Pennsylvania-bred company should better suit her.

The Todd Pletcher-trained Firsthand Report flopped in a Tampa turf-sprint stakes over the winter but won and placed in first-level turf-sprint allowances last summer at Saratoga, races that decently fit the Power By Far.

The horse to beat, however, is Fat Kat, who won this race a year ago by almost three lengths and comes off a frontrunning high-caliber allowance victory in a Delaware Park turf sprint.