Experience packed Grade 2 New Orleans Handicap reel in top handicappers of the country
Though the 1st April, 2012, will have the Grade 2, $ 1 million Louisiana Derby as the feature race at Fair Grounds Race Course, where 14 sophomore colts will compete over a distance of 1 1/8 miles, but on the same card another race would have
tremendous weight compare to the feature, and that race is the Grade 2, $400,000 New Orleans Handicap also at 1 1/8 miles, and the nine horses competing in the race are the most watched and experienced horses there are, and not to mention well accomplished.
The top handicap horses of the country will lock their horns in a race which is deemed to overshadow the feature race of the Fair Grounds Race Course this Sunday.
The likes of Mission Impazible, Nehro and Pants On Fire will be in a same field after a long time, and its all shaping up to be a mouth watering encounter going into the race.
Zayat Stables’ 4-year-old colt, Nehro, who participated in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby last year and finished as a runner up to Animal Kingdom, and then went to finish fourth in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes raced this season in an allowance/optional claimer
at about 1 mile and 70 yards, and started off the new campaign on a winning note.
Steven Asmussen trained horse will be up against Kelly Breen trained 4-year-old, Pants on Fire, who won the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby last year went on to finish 9th in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby, first in the Grade3 Pegasus Stakes and at Monmouth
he finished fifth in the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational.
He too started the New Year with a win in an allowance/optional claimer at about a mile at Gulfstream Park.
Though, Mission Impazible opted for a tougher start than his competitors in the New Orleans Handicap, as he went for the Grade 1 Donn Handicap, but the Donn heartbreaker came when he got run down by Hymn Book in the stretch and finished a solid second.
Todd Pletcher has kept him on the work tab ever since, and Mission Impazible at Palm Meadows Training Center on 26 March breezed four furlongs in 48 1/5 seconds.
“He’s just a good-doin’ horse,” said Randy Gullatt of Twin Creeks. “He tries hard in the mornings and he’s never failed to show up in the afternoons. We were very pleased with his final move and feel like we’re coming into the race in great shape.”
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