KEENELAND 2011 FALL MEET: Day 2

With the first day in the books for the Keeneland Fall meet it's time to turn to Day 2 and the four graded stakes races on tap in Lexington.  As is common for most days at Keeneland, today's card features a lot of races with big, deep fields; in other words, some really good betting races.

-There are two Maiden Special Weight races on the card (races 2 and 4), both at seven furlongs for juvenile fillies.  I've gone through each of the starters for those two races and pulled the data for each sire relating to how their runners have done on the Keeneland Polytrack since the fall 2006 meet.  The numbers do not include the first day of the 2011 meeting.

Unfortunately, we don't have any offspring from Kitten's Joy running in either of these maiden races because he is one of the king sires for horses running and winning on the Keeneland Polytrack.  If you look at just his KEE main track runners, offspring of Kitten's Joy are 41-11-6-5 (27% Win%, 54% ITM).  I haven't had time to calculate an ROI on those runners, but I plan to get around to it fairly soon.

Following Stephanie's Kitten's win in yesterday's Alcibiades, owner Ken Ramsey joked on TVG that "Kitten's Joy's stud fee just went up!"

Okay, so leaving Kitten's Joy out of it, Giant's Causeway, Smart Strike, Indian Charlie, and A.P. Indy have all had a decent amount of success with their offspring running over the Keeneland main track.  On the other side of the equation, Tapit, Quiet American, Stormy Atlantic, Afleet Alex, and Limehouse haven't produced much in the way of winners in Lexington.

The Giant's Causeway filly in the 2nd race (8-Breeze Show) is 20/1 on the morning line.  In the fourth race, the horses with the best Poly pedigree success are listed at the following odds:

1-Coasting: 6/1
2-Twitter Pie: 8/1
3-Trading Paint: 5/2
7-Indyniable: 6/1

-Today's Grade 1 Breeders' Futurity features a field, all of which own at least one start over a turf and/or synthetic surface.  Quite the contract from yesterday's Alcibiades where almost half the field had never touched a surface other than dirt during a race. 

It's a little hard to predict how 8-Lucky Chappy (IRE) (8/1) will fare in his first North American start in the Futurity.  He hasn't run since winning at the San Siro in Italy in early July but he's in the hands of Graham Motion, a very capable trainer when dealing with horses running the first time off the place.  Lucky Chappy has shown a bit of speed in Europe, which suggests he should be able to at least keep touch a little bit in the early going.  His sire, High Chaparral (IRE), has only had one of his offspring run over the Poly at Keeeneland; High Approval finished 10th in a Maiden Special Weight during the 2007 Fall meet.

-Gio Ponti is back to try and defend his title in the Grade 1 Shadwell Turf Mile but he won't have it easy today.  4-Zoffany (IRE) (3/1) is an Aidan O'Brien European raider that hasn't done much this season... except come within 3/4 of Frankel (GB) in the Group 1 St James's Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot back in mid-June.  Now, to be fair, Zofffany got close to Frankel due in large part to a less than stellar ride from Frankel's jock, Tom Queally. But you still got to give Zoffany some credit for running down a horse that is probably the best miler in the world and one of the best horses in training anywhere on the globe.

Zoffany's last race was a dud, but probably can be forgiven due to the soft ground at Deauville.  Prior to that last race he ran in four straight Group 1s and finished second three times and third once. He is a legit win candidate on European form alone.