Five-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher, who won Fair Grounds’ Grade II Risen Star Stakes last season with Let’s Go Stable’s El Padrino, will try to make it two straight by sending Dogwood Stable’s
Palace Malice to New Orleans for this year’s $400,000 Risen Star as the centerpiece event of four graded stakes that will make up Louisiana Derby Preview Day Presented by Lamarque Ford Feb. 23 at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots.
The Risen Star Stakes is the designed local tune-up for the upcoming 100th running of the $1 million Louisiana Derby March 30.
Palace Malice is a sophomore son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, and the colt broke his maiden at Saratoga last summer but bucked his shins after that score and made his first start of 2013 in an allowance and $75,000 optional claiming race at Gulfstream Jan. 19, where he finished second.
“We can get (two-time defending jockey champion) Rosie Napravnik (to ride our horse in the Risen Star) in New Orleans,” stated Dogwood president (and New Orleans-born) Cot Campbell in a Dogwood press release. “Our horse is an easy shipper and he’s been training sharply for Todd Pletcher since his good 2013 debut.”
Pletcher also won the 2010 Risen Star with E. Paul Robsham Stables’ Discreetly Mine.