Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
With nominations reopened, Spielberg heads to Southwest
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The field for the Grade 3, $750,000 Southwest Stakes rescheduled for Saturday at Oaklawn Park could be larger than initially anticipated as new nominees like Southern California-based Spielberg have committed to the points race for the Kentucky Derby.
“We’re going,” trainer Bob Baffert said Monday. “We’ll see what he does over there. He’s been training well.”
The Southwest’s original date was Feb. 15, but racing was canceled due to a winter storm system. The stakes was subsequently rescheduled for Feb. 20, then Feb. 21 in the face of a worsening forecast before those race dates were lost to the storm and the Southwest was moved to Saturday.
Nominations were reopened, and Baffert signed up Spielberg, winner of the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity in December. The horse worked six furlongs in a bullet 1:13 on Sunday at Santa Anita. Baffert said Martin Garcia has the mount in the Southwest.
Spielberg was one of a handful of new nominees to the Southwest. The race was originally forecast to draw five horses, but Pat Pope, racing secretary at Oaklawn, said Saturday that he believed the Southwest could now draw as many as seven or eight runners.
Essential Quality, the champion 2-year-old male of 2020, and Jackie’s Warrior, who was a finalist for the Eclipse Award, both are scheduled to launch their seasons in the Southwest. They have been working at Fair Grounds. Essential Quality will ship to Oaklawn with stablemate Monomoy Girl, the champion older female of 2020 who is being pointed to the rescheduled $250,000 Bayakoa on Sunday.
“We’re planning on coming, planning on running,” Brad Cox, who trains both Essential Quality and Monomoy Girl, said Monday. “They haven’t missed any training.”
Cox said Florent Geroux would be aboard Monomoy Girl and Luis Saez has the mount on Essential Quality.
Keepmeinmind, winner of the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes in November at Churchill Downs, is based at Oaklawn and had been targeting the Southwest. However, the winter storm has led to the loss of 11 days of training for local horses through Monday, and his status for the Southwest was “undecided” as of Monday, according to trainer Robertino Diodoro.
“I think the first step is we’ll enter and then we’ll kind of play it by ear,” said Diodoro, who wants to see how training goes for Keepmeinmind.
Diodoro said Monday morning that he was hopeful training would resume at Oaklawn by Tuesday afternoon. Entries for the Southwest were to be taken Tuesday.
Oaklawn has started to emerge from a deep freeze that has cost the track eight race dates through Sunday. Temperatures were in the 50s on Monday, and the track is scheduled to resume racing Thursday.
“We’re planning on reopening for Thursday, but like all the other Arkansas towns and southern states, we have to deal with this horrendous storm,” Lou Cella, president of Oaklawn, said Monday. “We closed the facility at midnight Saturday because of water pressure issues. We’re slowly getting off the mat and moving forward.”
The storm was the worst many have seen at Oaklawn.
“We got, in some places, 14, 16 inches of snow and frankly, it didn’t get above freezing for over a week,” Cella said. “When you have a track like ours with a ton of snow and freezing temperatures, it really turns into an ice rink and you can’t do anything to that track until Mother Nature puts on the defrost button.
“We put on zero chemicals.” The races Thursday will be something of a reset button for the meet that started Jan. 22. Oaklawn is often referred to as the fifth season in Arkansas, behind winter, spring, summer, and fall.
“The sixth season, due to Mother Nature, starts Thursday,” Pope said.
“That’s what it looks like, a new start,” trainer Joe Petalino said.
Petalino, who won the Oaklawn title in 2000, said he had never seen temperatures drop so low in Hot Springs. Neither has Ron Moquett, who trains Oaklawn’s resident champion, Whitmore.
“I’ve never seen this in my life, and I hope I don’t see it again,” Moquett said. “The snow was very pretty – and very disruptive.”
Moquett said much like everyone else on the backstretch at Oaklawn, his stable had to adjust to the extended burst of winter.
“We keep reacting, trying to kind of counter punch,” he said. “We alter their diet when they’re not training and we’re lucky my barn is one you can shed row in – jog under tack in the shed. That’s a benefit to us.”
The weather made it difficult for some who work in the stable area to even get to Oaklawn.
“We had to take a four-wheeldrive vehicle and go pick up some of our help,” Moquett said. “Some couldn’t get themselves out of where they live. They live in lakefront houses. We told them to walk to the main road and we’ll pick you up.”
Petalino said once racing returns, he suspects the difficult last week and a half will become a distant memory. The forecast for Saturday is a high of 57 degrees and a 50 percent chance of rain, according to The Weather Channel.