Warrior's Charge, Gun It to face off in top Fair Grounds flight

Warrior’s Charge, fourth in the Preakness Stakes before missing top 3-year-old races over the summer due to colic, is entered for his return to the races.

The Brad Cox trainee’s set to go against the expensive colt Gun It on Wednesday, Dec. 18, in a 1 1/16-mile allowance optional race at Fair Grounds.

Campaigned by Ten Strike Racing and Sol Kumin’s Madaket Stables, the Florida-bred Warrior’s Charge returned to the work tab Nov. 1 and breezed 5/8 of a mile most recently on Monday in 59.60 seconds at Churchill Downs.

Clay Sanders, a founding partner in Ten Strike, told Horse Racing Nation upon Warrior’s Charge’s return to training in October that, “We have high hopes that he can be a Grade 1 type of route horse next year.”

The Munnings colt set the pace in the Preakness Stakes before staying on for fourth, with that effort following a pair of dominant 1 1/16-mile victories at Oaklawn Park by a combined 12 1/2 lengths.

Sanders said lucrative targets back in Arkansas — namely the $1 million Oaklawn Handicap (G2) — could be on the agenda for Warrior’s Charge.

Gun It’s presence makes for a tough ask on return. The former $2.6 million yearling trained by Steve Asmussen continued to throw his head around, zigging and zagging in an allowance victory last month at Churchill.

Despite the antics, however, Gun It emerged 5 3/4 clear for a win.

“He’s still green, but he’s fast,” Doug Cauthen, vice chairman of Three Chimneys Farm, told HRN after the race.

Three Chimneys campaigns the son of Tapit in partnership with Mandy Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm. He, too, could be a stakes candidate out of this flight having appeared earlier this year in the Risen Star (G2).

Gun It drew post No. 3 in the field of six, while Warrior’s Charge will break from the No. 5 hole. Others in race, from the rail out, are Dictator, Altito, Broth and Frolic More.

The race goes as the seventh of nine, with post time 4:24 p.m. ET.