Much uncertainty in Lacombe

There’s a lot of experimentation happening in the $75,000 Allen “Black Cat” Lacombe Memorial Stakes for 3-year-old fillies, the featured ninth race Saturday at Fair Grounds.

Saranya, the 7-2 morningline favorite, is one of five in this 10-horse field racing for the first time in stakes competition. New Boss also makes her stakes debut after a blowout turf-sprint allowance victory over the Fair Grounds grass course and tackles the first twoturn race of her career. Simply Sovereign has shown she can handle a two-turn middle distance and stakes competition, having dead-heated for second last out in the Trapeze Stakes at Remington Park, but this filly never has tried turf.

“She has the pedigree that we need to see if she can run on turf,” said Steve Asmussen, who trains Simply Sovereign for her breeder, Winchell Thoroughbreds.

Simply Sovereign is by turf influence American Pharoah and out of Simplify, a stakesclass sprinter who equaled her career-best Beyer Speed Figure, 89, in one of only two grass races. Her most successful foal to race, Simple Surprise, won the Bolton Landing Stakes over 5 1/2 furlongs on grass at Saratoga.

Of Simply Sovereign, Asmussen said, “She’s kind of small and turfy, and I haven’t done too much with her” since the Dec. 18 Trapeze.

Arm Candy is Asmussen’s other entrant in the Lacombe. He’d like to see her get a fair chance to show her talent. Arm Candy has raced three times this meet, getting rained off turf once and finding little luck her other two starts.

“She’s a nice filly who hasn’t gotten a decent trip all meet,” he said.

Saranya, trained by Brad Cox, has gone 2 for 2 this meet, winning a turf-route maiden and a turf-route allowance, her first two starts on the antibleeder medication Lasix. She’s proven tactically versatile, going to the front in her maiden win and coming from behind a slow pace in her most recent start, and Cox won the colts and geldings version of this race, the Black Gold, last weekend.

Earth Strike finished second, splitting Saranya and Arm Candy, while making her American debut Feb. 5 after being imported from England. She rallied solidly in that race and should have a chance to move forward in the second race of her form cycle.

Euphoric crushed dirt-sprint maiden foes while riding what appeared to be an early-card inside speed bias on Feb. 13, and she could get caught up dueling with the quick New Boss. The others – Princess Theorem, Dramatizer, Barista, and Spun d’Etat – all have something to recommend them, too, and the Lacombe looks quite competitive.

◗ Room to Finish was sixth as the even-money favorite in the 2020 Red Camelia Stakes, a turf route for older Louisianabred fillies and mares, but bettors figure to rate her on her more recent form facing openstakes competition and make her favored again in Saturday’s renewal of the $60,000 Red Camelia. Net a Bear, who won the race last year, and frontrunning Offspring both rate a solid win chance.