Amoss Reflects on 4-for-4 Day at Fair Grounds
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Ten-time leading Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots trainer Tom Amoss celebrated a remarkable day Nov. 29 at his home track, winning with all four of his starters.
"It was nice," Amoss reflected a day later. "Days like that don't happen very often. When they do, you have to save it in your mind for the days that don't go so well."
Amoss, a New Orleans native and LSU graduate, is currently striking at an intense 57% rate with eight wins in his first 14 tries following his Saturday grand slam.
There was touch of the bitter with the sweetness for Amoss, however. His charge Sum of the Parts—a 5-year-old graded stakes-winning horse whose talent took Amoss to the Breeders' Cup on three separate occasions—was claimed out of the feature race, an allowance/optional claiming event, for $40,000.
"The one thing I did do was visit Sum of the Parts in the test barn after the race," Amoss said with no small degree of dolefulness. "I've had him since he was a 2-year-old and he means a lot to me. I told the owner that if it doesn't work out with the horse, he has a home with me when he's done racing."
Sum of the Parts, who has earned $876,189 and won six stakes—including two editions of the grade III Phoenix Stakes at Keeneland—was claimed by owner End Zone Athletics and trainer Karl Broberg.
He won Saturday's feature wire to wire by a widening 3 3/4 lengths. The son of Speightstown earned a 106 Equibase Speed Figure with his sharp six-furlong time of 1:10.01 under James Graham, who was aboard all four of Amoss' victors.
The win represented a return to form for Sum of the Parts, a muscular dark bay, after six consecutive losses. It came at the expense of stakes winners Tanzanite Cat, Visionary Ruler, and Mighty Brown. He returned $5.80 as the 19-10 second choice in the ninth race for Klaravich Stables and Willliam H. Lawrence.
Other winners for Amoss on the Saturday card were Maggi Moss' class-dropping Salty's Officer ($4.20) in the third race; Sweet Daddy ($4.20), who won a three-way photo by a nose in the fourth; and Sibling War ($5.60), a 10-length victor in the seventh race.