Wilson’s plan pays off with hot start at meet

Shane Wilson has won the last three training titles at Louisiana Downs. His ascendance in Bossier City now has cut kitty-corner across Louisiana to New Orleans.

Through Sunday, Wilson had 15 Fair Grounds winners, nine more than Joe Sharp, whose six winners rank second. Wilson’s volume of runners has been as surprising as his winners: Just 17 days into the 2023-24 season, Wilson already had 80 starters, 35 more than the next-highest total.

Wilson used the gap between the end of the Louisiana Downs meeting in mid-September and the start of Fair Grounds in mid-November to line up his stable.

“We’re conscious that when Churchill ends [in late November] and those guys start settling in, the meet gets harder,” Wilson said. “It was my plan to have everybody ready, spots all picked out, and get what we could as soon as we could.”

More broadly, Wilson, 52, has put together a career year during 2023 with 88 winners through Sunday, seven more than his previous high of 81 in 2022. His $2.36 million in stable earnings is roughly $720,000 higher than last year’s peak. It has not always been so. Wilson, who mucked stalls for Hall of Famer Jack van Berg as a teenager, spent seven years as an assistant to trainer Sam David before opening his own stable in 1998. After a 1-for-41 year in 2005, Wilson, with a wife and two young sons, left the track, taking a sales job in Texas. While Wilson left racing, racing did not loosen its grip on Wilson, who returned to training in 2007, moving his family to Lafayette, La., home of Evangeline Downs and a manageable distance from Delta Downs. During the Delta meet, Wilson would arise at 3 a.m. to make the 90-minute drive from Lafayette to Vinton. His first year back, Wilson went 1 for 67. His 2009 season was equally discouraging, with five wins from 155 starts.

After 2009, Wilson’s foothold continuously strengthened, though Fair Grounds success eluded him. Racing sparingly in New Orleans most winters, Wilson won just nine races from 166 Fair Grounds starters between 2008 and 2020. He has exceeded in one month his win total over a dozen years.

Wilson’s younger son, Connor, 20, is taking online college classes while serving as a key assistant in the barn. “He does all the shipping and takes care of a lot of the day-to-day stuff. It’s taken a lot of the load off me and is a big reason we’ve done this well,” Wilson said.

Wilson has 45 horses at Fair Grounds and 55 more at Louisiana Downs, his stable heavy on claiming stock and Louisianabreds. This past May, Wilson started working for Louisiana powerhouse Brittlyn Stables and now trains all the Brittlyn horses. That association produced two Louisiana Champions Day winners, Behemah Star in the Turf and Ova Charged in the Ladies Sprint.

Wilson’s career has unfolded at nothing like a sprint pace. He’s hit full stride now.

Top sprinters pass on La Brea

High-class Fair Groundsbased 3-year-old filly sprinters Vahva and Alva Starr in a different year likely would be starting Dec. 26 at Santa Anita in the Grade 1 La Brea. Instead, the two fillies, respectively first and second last out in the Grade 2 Raven Run at Keeneland, are being aimed at lesser objectives.

Connections of the pair found a dearth of California-bound flights in December. Faced with the prospect of a 28-hour van trip, everyone took a pass.

Alva Starr, who won the Grade 2 Prioress on Sept. 2 at Saratoga by nearly nine lengths, will make her next start at Oaklawn Park, either in the Poinsettia on Dec. 30 or the American Beauty on Jan. 27, trainer Brett Brinkman said.

Vahva, who captured the Grade 3 Charles Town Oaks before a sharp score in the Raven Run, is being pointed toward the Grade 2, $200,000 Inside Information Stakes on Jan. 27 at Gulfstream Park, trainer Cherie DeVaux said.

“It’s too bad because the La Brea had been her goal since Keeneland,” said DeVaux. “Hopefully, she wins a Grade 1 sometime this year and it all works out.”

Nash tops Gun Runner

Though it offers a purse of just $100,000, the Gun Runner Stakes has yielded a Kentucky Derby runner in each of its first two years of existence, though Epicenter, the Derby runner-up in 2022, turned into a far more important horse than Jace’s Road, 17th in this year’s Derby.

Epicenter’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, and Jace’s Road’s trainer, Brad Cox, each have two entries in Saturday’s Gun Runner, which, along with the rest of an eight-stakes Dec. 23 card, was drawn last Saturday.

Cox sends out the favorite, Nash, hyped as a Derby horse despite the fact he has only a maiden win from two career starts. The maiden win, to be fair, was very strong, a Nov. 12 route romp at Churchill Downs that yielded a 97 Beyer Speed Figure. Cox also entered lesser prospect Catching Freedom.

From Asmussen’s barn comes Track Phantom, a smart Nov. 25 Churchill maiden route winner, and Risk It, a troubled fourth the same day in the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes.