Pletcher makes rare foray

One doesn’t at all associate the trainer Todd Pletcher with racing at Indiana Grand, while that track is trainer Mike Lauer’s bread and butter. Two divergent operations, both with strong favorites in a pair of $150,000 Indiana-bred stakes races Tuesday at Indiana Grand.

Pletcher’s runner is the filly Piedi Bianchi in the $150,000 Frances Slocum Stakes (race 6, post time 4:25 Eastern), who is listed at 8-5 on the track’s morning line but figures a shorterpriced favorite than that. Piedi Bianchi initially was entered earlier this autumn in another Indiana-bred stakes at Indiana Grand, but wasn’t among the entries for that race when it had to be re-carded following a weather cancellation.

Three-year-old Piedi Bianchi, who has New York-based Manny Franco named to ride, was Grade 1-placed last year at age 2 and never has started in an Indiana-bred stakes race. She spent last season in California with trainer Doug O’Neill and has started only three times this year while on the East Coast with Pletcher. Overmatched in the Grade 1 Alabama at Saratoga, Piedi Bianchi came back with a second-place open allowance finish last out at Belmont that should set her up for a very competitive run Tuesday. She breaks from post 10, which isn’t a great draw, and won’t offer any value given her high-profile connections.

The obvious alternatives to Piedi Bianchi are Expect Indy and Marina’s Legacy, though the latter is a somewhat onedimensional pace horse.

Immediately following the Slocum comes the $150,000 To Much Coffee, the same race without the Slocum’s filly-andmare sex restriction. Lauer has four stakes wins this meet and three chances at another in the To Much Coffee, though The Money Dance clearly is the best among his trio of entrants.

The Money Dance has been based at the Churchill Downs Training Center this summer and fall but like Piedi Bianchi made his most recent start at Belmont in New York. He ran well, too, finishing third in an open second-level allowance race run over a sloppy track. The Money Dance, after a strong start to his season, went through a flat period in June, but in his most recent Indiana-bred dirt-stakes start he cruised to an easy win, albeit facing only 3-year-olds in the Governor’s on Aug. 16. This field of older rivals will prove somewhat more challenging but The Money Dance probably is up to the task.