Today at Oaklawn
HOT SPRINGS — Significant warmups for the Racing Festival of the South come today at Oaklawn Park with stakes races for some of the elite among fillies, mares and Arkansas-bred horses.
The festival starts Thursday and will feature seven stakes races in three days, including five graded stakes highlighted by the Grade I Arkansas Derby next Saturday. The 6-furlong $150,000 Carousel Stakes for fillies and mares 4 years old and up and the 1 1/16-mile $100,000 Arkansas Breeders’ Stakes for 3 year olds and up are featured in today’s 10-race program.
The Carousel has a post time scheduled for 5:09 p.m., and the Arkansas Breeders’ for 4:09 p.m.
Steve Asmussen trainee Vertical Oak, a 4-year-old by Giant Oak, is listed to start from the fourth gate as the 9-5 morning-line favorite in the six-horse Carousel field with Ricardo Santana Jr. as the rider. Mythical Tale, a 4-year-old daughter of Tiznow trained by Brad Cox, is the 2-1 second choice and has jockey Gary Stevens listed as her rider from the fifth gate.
Mythical Tale has not raced in stakes company.
“It’s time for us to take the next step, and the next step for her is stakes races,” Cox said. “We’re thinking she can be competitive in them.”
Others in the field, from the first gate out, are Marquee Miss, with rider C.J. McMahon and trainer Ingrid Mason; Thoughtless, with David Cohen and Mac Robertson; Swing and Sway, with David Cabrera and Ron Moquett; and Impasse, with Terry Thompson and D. Wayne Lukas.
Robertson trainee Glacken’s Ghost, a 5-year-old son of Smoke Glacken owned by Hugh Robertson and Greg Giles, is the
5-2 morning-line favorite in the Arkansas Breeders’. Glacken’s Ghost finished second by three-quarters of a length to J.E’s Handmedown and onehalf length in front of third-place Five O One in Oaklawn’s 6-furlong Nodouble Breeders’ Stakes on March 3. J.E.’s Handmedown and Five O One are also listed to start in the 11-horse Arkansas Breeders’ field.
Despite its stakes status, the Carousel represents a considerable drop in class for Vertical Oak. It follows a break of six months since Vertical Oak’s last race, when she finished last out of seven in the Grade II TCA Stakes at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Ky. That race was her final of four consecutive graded stakes, a run that included a victory in the Grade II Prioress Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on Sept. 3. Kirk and Judy Robinson’s Vertical Oak has earned $446,700 in 13 career starts.
The Carousel would be Mythical Tale’s third start since Bloom Racing Stable turned the filly over to Cox’s guidance. It follows a 6-furlong victory in 1:09.2 in an optional-claiming race March 16 in which Mythical Tale finished 1½ lengths in front of second-place Marquee Miss, a 5-year-old by Cowboy Cal.
“We expected a big effort out of her,” Cox said. “She had been doing extremely well, and she showed up and ran tremendous. We like her a lot and think a lot of her. We’re running back a little quick, buts she’s doing well. We’re excited about her and think she has a big shot.”
Rainfall on Thursday afternoon and through most of Friday likely will result in a wet track for racing at Oaklawn today, which Mason said will lead her to scratch Marquee Miss. Shortly after Marquee Miss finished fifth out of eight in a 6-furlong optional-claiming race over a track rated good at Oaklawn on Jan. 12, Mason and Marquee Miss owner Joe Ragsdale decided to reserve her future competitive efforts for fast tracks.
“There’s no point in trying to run her on a wet track,” Mason said. “She doesn’t run on them at all. She just doesn’t like the rain.”
Marquee Miss made a figurative splash at Oaklawn in 2016 with victories in the 6-furlong Dixie Belle and 1-mile Martha Washington Stakes. Including the Martha Washington, she ran a mile or farther in six of her next seven starts but has run one-turn races in each of her subsequent 16 starts.
“I always thought she would be better sprinting,” Mason said. “She wasn’t finishing those longer races the way she should’ve or the way she was training. I’m not saying she can’t go a route of ground, because she’s proved she can, but she’s just not nearly as good at those races.”