Fair Grounds: Strike Impact Set for Bradley

Chester Miller and Pat Dupuy’s Strike Impact, hero of Fair Grounds’ $75,000 Buddy Diliberto Memorial Handicap on Dec. 22, may end up as the starting high weight despite being assigned 117 pounds in Fair Grounds’ Grade III Col. E. R. Bradley Handicap Jan. 19 at about 1 1/16 miles over the Stall-Wilson Turf Course although Brushwood Stable’s Philly Ace with 119 pounds remains a possibility at this time.

The latter, stabled at South Florida’s Payson Park, won Calder’s Grade III Tropical Turf Handicap at last asking Nov. 30 and is under the tutelage of the sometimes inscrutable but always talented turf trainer Christophe Clement.

The Colonel Bradley, one of five stakes slated for Fair Grounds’ Road to the Derby Kickoff Day Presented by Hotel Monteleone, also serves as the first leg of the local oval’s three-race grass stakes series for older horses that concludes with the Grade II Mervin Muniz Memorial Handicap on Louisiana Derby Day, March 30.

Others expected for the Colonel Bradley, with their respective weights assigned, are  Chuck and Ella Lou Hagaman’s Bim Bam (115), David Holloway Racing’s Dubious Miss (115), Charles Craig Smith’s String King (115), Adele Dilscheider’s Unlatch (115) and Amerman Racing Stables’ Tetradrachm (114).

String King has won the last two renewals of Fair Grounds’ $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Turf and Unlatch won the $75,000 Woodchopper earlier this season.

REMINDER:  SPECIAL 2 P.M. POST TIME SET FOR JAN. 12

Fair Grounds  guests and fans of the local oval’s simulcast signal are reminded that there will be a special post time of 2 p.m. for Saturday’s 13-race program that will also include a fun-filled evening of entertainment with zebra and ostrich exhibition races.