Tricky any way you look at it

Bob Fortus used to say most people read Daily Racing Form past performances backward, starting from the top, the most recent race, and prying back into the past. The better method, Fortus contended, was to begin with the oldest form and work forward to see what the horse had become going into the race at hand.

Fortus’s personal past performances ended this summer, when he died from complications stemming from injuries incurred when a car struck him three blocks from the Mystery Street gate leading into his beloved Fair Grounds. The track wasted no time naming a race for the longtime New Orleans Times-Picayune turf writer and handicapper, and in honor of Fortus, please read the running lines bottom to top for the eight entrants in the $75,000 Bob Fortus Memorial Stakes.

Start with Moonlit Garden, the 7-5 morning-line favorite in this mile and 70-yard dirt race for older fillies and mares. Moonlit Garden 12 races ago, the last running line on her page, hit a 93 Beyer Speed Figure, a careerbest, finishing second in a Monmouth Park stakes race in 2018. About 11 months ago, she got an 89 finishing a close second to top-class Midnight Bisou in the Houston Ladies Classic. More recently, Moonlit Garden has been finishing evenly (at best) and earning Beyers in the low 80s while nibbling at the margins of graded stakes races. She’s scheduled to be sold at auction in January after turning 6, and it seems clear Moonlit Garden’s best racing is slipping beneath the horizon.

In fact, a clear-eyed view of the Fortus Memorial suggests no horse deserves to be decidedly favored, and if the bettors bite on Moonlit Garden, others in the race glow with value.

Louisiana-bred Mariah’s Galaxy has come into peak form during her 5-year-old season, enters after back-to-back stakes wins at Delta Downs, and is trained by Victor Arceneaux, a 38 percent winner with his last 37 stakes starters.

Down on the rail, Enchanted Ghost is set to make her first start since June after changing circuits (Maryland to Louisiana) and trainers (now with Mike Stidham). A look back through her running lines reveals 11 one-turn races and one start around two turns. Was it merely coincidence that the lone true route produced a peak performance, a stakes win, and a career-best 85 Beyer? Perhaps not.

Grandaria resolutely overcame a slow pace to win a Keeneland allowance race in October, an encouraging effort, and followed that up with an absolute dud in the Falls City at Churchill, finishing ninth in a race where Moonlit Garden was third.

“I’ve no idea what happened there,” said trainer Brendan Walsh, who will try Grandaria in blinkers for the first time Thursday. “We were expecting a lot more.”

Who knows what to expect from Out for a Spin. She won the Grade 1 Ashland this past spring at 52-1 but has been nowhere near that performance level in four starts before the race and two since.