Horse Racing: Garrity returns to Sunland Park

We're headed back to familiar climes today, to Sunland Park in eastern New Mexico. It's a down and dirty kind of handicapping day, and we like three races featuring horses bred in New Mexico. It's a hard-knocking claimer kind of day -- a midweek card in February -- so in that spirit, we will get right to it:

Race 1 (2:50 pm Eastern) is a $10,000 maiden claimer at 6 furlongs for New Mexico-bred three-year-olds. 2-Lunfardo, and 6-McThanks, both drop from maiden special to maiden claiming, and both seem to outclass the field. We think they finish 1-2, so we'll play them back and forth in the exacta: that's a $10 2-6 exacta box, for a total investment of $20.

Race 5 (4:34 pm Eastern) is a 5 1/2 furlong sprint for older female New Mexico-breds in for a $5,000 claiming price. 4-Allaboutthatbull, is lone speed. She's gotten the lead in each of her last five races, and while she's had issues staying, we think she hangs on today: the lack of other speed here should allow her to relax, and to carry her speed through the finish line. We'll take 7/2 on her, and bet $20 to win.

Race 7 (5:26 pm Eastern) is another 5 1/2 furlong sprint for older female New Mexico-breds in for a $5,000 tag. We like 10- Fascinating Allie: she did the speed-and-fade routine last out, but that was on a track biased against speed. We are expecting a normal track today -- normal being speed-favoring -- and we expect her to revert to her prior form, which looks good enough here. She's 7-2 on the morning line, and we will bet $25 on her to win.

That's all for today. Good luck at the windows.