GIII Lecomte S.

Favored in the betting right up until the final bit of money poured into the pools, Track Phantom (Quality Road) took control of Saturday's GIII Lecomte S. at a chilly Fair Grounds Racecourse right from the opening bell and never looked like losing, leading past every pole to pick up 20 points on the Road to the Kentucky Derby. Having earned 10 points for his victory in the local Gun Runner S. at the tail end of 2023, Track Phantom now sits atop the leaderboard with GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile...

Like one of those old split-flap mechanical signs at train stations, everyone knows that in the new year the 'Run for the Roses' leaderboard will fluctuate. Week-to-week, the top points begin to compound--from 20 to the winner Saturday and going as high as 100 to the winner come April. The trail to Derby 150 begins a much steeper ascent on Saturday at Fair Grounds in New Orleans as the GIII Lecomte S. offers 3-year-old colts 20-10-6-4-2 that can be applied to Bank of Churchill. This year's edition pits a field...

From his desk in the racing office, Stuart Slagle views stakes coordination as a vocation that is part sales and part diplomacy, but for him, it is also part science. As a former academic who received a B.S. in Zoology at the University of Texas in Austin and studied biophysics at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana before working with supercomputers as a system engineer, his approach to filling a stakes race is always interspersed with the scientific method and predictive analytics. "There is nothing like pursuing the science of...

Al Gold had a few things to look forward to Saturday at the Fair Grounds. Earlier Saturday morning, his multiple Grade I winner Cyberknife (Gun Runner) turned in the final work of his career ahead of next Saturday's GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational S., while his Instant Coffee (Bolt d'Oro) was looking to further cement his status as a leading light for this year's GI Kentucky Derby in the GIII Lecomte S. Cyberknife confirmed that he is on song for his career finale next weekend, and Instant Coffee followed suit...