Heartwood makes return to Oaklawn as King Cotton favorite
Heartwood’s second career start came at Oaklawn Park and No. 26 will mark his return to Hot Springs in today’s $100,000 King Cotton Stakes for older sprinters at 6 furlongs.
Probable post time for the King Cotton, the seventh of nine races, is 4:20 p.m. Gates open at 11 a.m. with first post at 1:05 p.m.
The well-traveled Heartwood began his racing career with Hall of Famer and nine-time Oaklawn training champion Steve Asmussen and finished second as the favorite in a maiden special weights race in February 2017 at Oaklawn.
After being purchased for $75,000 by trainer James Chapman at Fasig-Tipton’s Summer Selected Horses of Racing Age Sale in 2017, Heartwood has run at Mountaineer Racetrack in West Virginia, Thistledown Race Track in Ohio, Kentucky Downs, Indiana Grand, Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio, Santa Anita Park in California, Turfway Park and Keeneland Race Course in Kentucky, Churchill Downs, Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Saratoga Race Course and Aqueduct Racetrack in New York, and Gulfstream Park in Florida.
Heartwood completed his busy 13-race 2018 campaign with a thirdplace finish in the Grade 3 $100,000 Mr. Prospector Stakes on Dec. 22 at Gulfstream Park. The gray son of Tapit will make his 5-year-old debut in the King Cotton after failing to meet his reserve at Keeneland’s January Horses of All Ages Sale, where he was entered as a racing or stallion prospect.
“It was one of the spots we were looking at,” Chapman said of the King Cotton. “We tried to put him through the sale and it backed us up a little bit and he had a foot bruise when he ran down in Florida. This was a minor thing with the foot bruise, so it set up fine for him.”
Heartwood won the $75,000 Senator Robert C. Byrd Memorial Stakes on Aug. 4 at Mountaineer and raced almost exclusively in graded stakes company the remainder of 2018. His past performance lines include heavyweights such as City of Light, Whitmore, Promises Fulfilled and Limousine Liberal.
Heartwood, the 3-1 King Cotton program favorite, has had three published workouts this year at The Thoroughbred Center near Lexington, Ky. The last was a 6-furlong move in 1:10 on Jan. 27.
“He was coming up to where he needed to do something,” said Chapman, who is stabled at The Thoroughbred Center and co-owns Heartwood with Stuart Tsujimoto. “He likes to run every 30 days. We don’t do a lot in between races with him.
“We kind of simulated a race and put a couple of horses out there in front of him for him to run down. It wasn’t a frozen track, but the bottom was hard, so it was a little bit deceiving, the time. But we let him be happy and that’s we did. He’s a nice horse.”
A multiple stakes winner, Heartwood has earned $391,403 with five victories from
25 lifetime starts.
The projected 10-horse King Cotton field from the rail out: Wilbo, David Cabrera to ride, 115 pounds, 7-2 on the morning line; Bourbon Cowboy, Orlando Mojica, 119, 8-1; Gordy Florida, Alex Birzer, 115, 8-1; Toasting Master, Alex Canchari, 115, 12-1; Heartwood,
115, David Cohen, 3-1; A M Milky Way, C.J. McMahon, 119, 30-1; Sightforsoreeyes, Walter De La Cruz, 115,
15-1; Balandeen, Fernando De La Cruz, 115, 4-1; Control Stake, Ricardo Santana Jr., 115, 9-2; and Dan the Go to Man, Edgar Morales, 115, 20-1.
Defending King Cotton cham-
pion Wilbo resurfaces after a lengthy freshening for 2015 Oaklawn training champion Chris Hartman. The Candy Ride gelding has not started since finishing third in the $100,000 Iowa Sprint Handicap on July 6 at Prairie Meadows Racetrack in Iowa.
Hartman said Wilbo worked steadily the last two months at Oaklawn and received the green light for the King Cotton following a Tuesday morning breeze that was not published because of heavy fog.
“We don’t really map them out much,” Hartman said. “We’ve got a rough guesstimation of all these races, but I don’t like to really pencil in anything.
“Horses aren’t really made to be put to paper. You get an idea and you like to go with it, but they have to tell you they’re ready to do all that stuff.”
Control Stake and Balandeen, a former Hartman trainee, finished second and third, respectively, in the $72,750 Duncan F. Kenner Stakes on Jan. 19 at Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans.