Miss Diane Wins Fair Grounds Feature

Centaur Farms, Merrill Scherer and Dan Lynch’s Miss Diane rallied strongly in the late stages of Monday’s featured $51,000 optional claiming dash for fillies and mares at Fair Grounds and withstood Gale Springer and Gabe Grossberg’s True Brew by a neck in the last strides.

Miss Diane, ridden by Brian Hernandez Jr. and trained by Merrill Scherer, toured the five and a half furlongs of the race transferred to the main track in 1:05.34 and increased her career earnings to $159,486 with her fifth win in 17 lifetime starts. She paid $8.40, $5.80 and $3.60.

True Brew returned mutuels of $9 and $4 in the runner-up spot, while Divine Equine’s pacesetting Dajohna, who set early fractions of 22.17 and 45.17, weakened to third, 1 1/4-lengths behind Dajohna, and paid $2.80