Three players who teamed up for several scores throughout the
143rd Thoroughbred racing season were named meet champions at Fair Grounds,
where James Graham was named leading rider, Tom Amoss named leading trainer and
Maggi Moss named leading owner. A pair of three-year-olds who swept the
sophomore stakes in their respective divisions, International Star (Fusaichi
Pegasus) and I’m a Chatterbox (Munnings), were named co-horses of the meet in a
tied vote.
James Graham, second in the Fair Grounds rider standings on four occasions,
captured his first meet title at the New Orleans oval, tallying 106 wins over
the 81-day meet, earning more than $3.2 million in purses. The 106 wins gave
Graham his best Fair Grounds meet, a one-win improvement upon his 105 wins in
the 2013-2014 racing season and provided him a 34-win margin of victory over his
closest pursuers in the standings. Graham’s biggest win of the season came in
the $400,000 New Orleans H. (G2) last Saturday aboard Call Me George (Point
Given), a 22-1 outsider. Not only was the New Orleans ‘Cap the most prestigious
win of the meet for Graham, it also marked his 2,000th career win as a rider.
New Orleans native Tom Amoss captured his 11th Fair Grounds training title
and second in the last three years when recording 41 victories, six more than
his closest challenger while his runners collected a meet-leading $1.29 million
in earnings from 152 starts. Ranked second all time in training wins at the Fair
Grounds, Amoss has now recorded 1,051 victories at his hometown racecourse,
second only to Hall of Famer Jack Van Berg’s estimated 1,210 local wins.
Maggi Moss once again prevailed as leading owner, with her 15 wins earning
her a fifth consecutive year atop the standings. Moss’ runners earned $437,695
while finishing in the exacta 52 percent of the time. Her royal blue and lime
green silks could be found in the winner’s circle after several stakes races,
including the Thanksgiving H. and Bonapaw S. with stable star Delaunay (Smoke
Glacken) and with Grand Contender (Strong Contender) after capturing the Buddy Diliberto Memorial
S. — both runners are conditioned by leading trainer Amoss.
The series of Kentucky Derby (G1) and Kentucky Oaks (G1) preps at Fair Grounds was
little more than a two-horse show this season, with both International Star and
I’m a Chatterbox sweeping the trio of stakes in their respective divisions,
earning them the shared title of Horse of the Meet.
International Star, owned by
Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey and conditioned by Mike Maker, posted three impressive
victories this year under jockey Miguel Mena, proving best in the Lecomte (G3), the Risen Star
(G2) and the Louisiana Derby (G2). His
counterpart in the three-year-old filly division was Fletcher and Carolyn Gray’s
Larry Jones-trained I’m a Chatterbox, who was successfully guided to victory in
three dramatically differing styles by jockey Florent Geroux in the Silverbulletday S., the Rachel Alexandra
(G3) and the Fair
Grounds Oaks (G2).
Voted on by 15 members of the media, the Fair Grounds racing office and the Fair
Grounds publicity team, both International Star and I’m a Chatterbox received
seven votes, with owner-trainer Jorge Gomez’s hard-knocking Louisiana-bred
Udoknowjack (Storm Day) receiving one vote after winning four races at the meet including
Saturday’s Star Guitar S.
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