Bob Wisener New track dates reflect ambitious scheduling

Oaklawn Park released its 2019 stakes schedule last week on opening day at Del Mar and two days before, like the famous swallows once to San Juan Capistrano, racing returned to historic Saratoga.

Through Labor Day weekend, horse racing will be talk of the town in Del Mar, Calif., at the seaside track synonymous with Bing Crosby, and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the word “upset” came into the sporting vernacular when a horse so named beat Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox.

Much the same applies to Hot Springs in late winter and early spring when Oaklawn’s live racing season is in full swing. Yes, I would like a fall season, complete with 2-yearold racing, and who wouldn’t appreciate an overhead walkway across Central Avenue. (I accept the arguments for not building a turf course.) But, hey, if it was good enough for Babe Ruth and other swells during, shall we say, a racier time, I risk protesting too much.

The release of Oaklawn’s stakes schedule has stirred many a sleepy sports summer in Hot Springs, last week’s announcement coming on one of the hottest days of the year. Oaklawn’s plans for 2019 created a greater buzz than usual in light of the track’s plans to extend the meeting beyond its traditional April limit, its release on Wednesday containing two items worthy of lead billing.

The bigger story nationally concerned the Rebel Stakes, Oaklawn’s major March prep for the Kentucky Derby and its own Arkansas Derby. No Oaklawn race has benefited more from the track’s economic boon since 2000 than the Rebel, now carrying a $1 million purse and hopeful of achieving top-of-the-line Grade 1 ranking. Though its past winners include champions Smarty Jones, Curlin and Lawyer Ron, the Rebel may be forever identified with 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, who launched his 3-year-old campaign at Oaklawn and returned to take the Arkansas Derby.

Another piece of breaking news concerned the track’s plans for those extra dates in April and newly scheduled ones in May.

We now have some idea what they’ll be doing at Oaklawn on Kentucky Derby Day. Anchoring the card on Saturday, May 4, will be the inaugural running of the $250,000 Oaklawn Invitational and the $200,000 Arkansas Breeders’ Championship. The May 3 program, on what is Kentucky Oaks Day at Churchill Downs, features the first running of the $200,000 Oaklawn Mile.

The Oaklawn Invitational, for 3-year-olds, becomes the local equivalent of Belmont Park’s Peter Pan, a substitute for horses lacking the points necessary to enter the Kentucky Derby. As such, it serves as a prep race for the Preakness, two weeks later at Pimlico in Baltimore, or the Belmont, five weeks hence in New York. The invitational’s nine-furlong distance makes it a viable alternative to, say, the Pat Day Mile on Churchill’s Derby Day undercard.

In turn, the Oaklawn Mile can become a lead-in to, say, the Pimlico Special or the Belmont race commonly known as the Met Mile.

The mile-and-sixteenth Arkansas Breeders’ Championship is the last of five Oaklawn stakes for Arkansas-bred horses, the only one at a two-turn distance. The track also rescheduled three late-season stakes — the Rainbow and Rainbow Miss, both for Arkansas-bred 3-year-olds, and the Bachelor, for male sprinters — on the two April weekends following the Arkansas Derby.

Moving the Grade 1 Apple Blossom to the Sunday (April 15) after the Arkansas Derby keeps racing interest high on what, with the Triple Crown prep races over, tends to be a slow racing day nationally. An Apple Blossom with star power on top of the Derby might keep national turf writers in town another day.

As in recent years, the Arkansas Derby card includes the Grade 2

$750,000 Oaklawn Handicap and the Grade 3 $400,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap, races that enticed me to the track decades ago. The Grade 3

$500,000 Fantasy needs only a 3-yearold filly of star quality (is another Rachel Alexandra too much to ask?) to regain its former elan.

Oaklawn’s 2019 stakes schedule comes with a sense of anticipation like a child opening presents on Christmas morning. But also with complications for the racing fan who wants to be in two places (Hot Springs and Louisville) on the first Saturday in May.