Eight go in G2 Rebel after Whitmore returns

Some major human players from the Southwest are back in the Rebel with different Kentucky Derby prospects.

Gone are Essential Quality, Spielberg and Jackie’s Warrior, the trifecta from the Grade

3 $750,000 race for 3-year-olds Feb. 27 at Oaklawn Racing Casino and Resort. New shooters include two horses each from the Steve Asmussen and Bob Baffert barns, all likely in chase of another Brad Cox trainee.

Throw in a Grade 2 winner in his seasonal debut for trainer Robertino Diodoro, and Saturday’s race should pack high drama. Eight horses entered the Grade 2 $1 million race, which offers 50 Kentucky Derby qualifying points to the winner. It also sharpens the focus for the April 10 running of the Grade 1

$1 million Arkansas Derby, the last 100-point prep before the May 1 classic at Churchill Downs.

The Rebel (race 11, 5:16 p.m.), at a mile and one-sixteenth, anchors a 12-race card starting at noon.

One race earlier (race 10, 4:45 p.m.), champion sprinter Whitmore returns in the

$200,000 Hot Springs, which the 8-yearold gelding has won the last four years for trainer and co-owner Ron Moquett. His six opponents include C Z Rocket, second to Whitmore in the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Sprint off a $40,000 Oaklawn claim in April by trainer Peter Miller. Asmussen also has two in this race, Bolder following his second stakes win of the year in Oaklawn’s King Cotton and Engage showing a 2019 Keeneland victory over Whitmore.

Ricardo Santana Jr. regains the mount on Whitmore, a $4.2 million winner with a

15-for-38 record, after Irad Ortiz Jr. had the honors in the Breeders’ Cup. A local winner every year since 2016, the son of Breeders Cup Classic winner Pleasantly Perfect breaks from post 6 with 121 pounds.

Early on the card, in race 5 (2:03 p.m.), the Grade 2 $350,000 Azeri brings out last year’s Kentucky Oaks and Oaklawn Honeybee winner Shedaresthedevil. Staton Flurry, of Hot Springs, co-owns the 4-year-old filly, last seen in the Grade 1 Spinster at Keeneland after upsetting future Preakness winner Swiss Skydiver in the Oaks at Churchill Downs. Because trainer Cox had the probable favorite (and winner) of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in champion Monomoy Girl, Shedaresthedevil has been freshened since October.

Ken McPeek, with Swiss Skydiver in California for the Grade 1 Beholder Mile Saturday, is represented in the Azeri by another multiple graded winner, 4-year-old Envoutante. Asmussen counters with 5-year-old Motion Emotion, a two-time Oaklawn winner in 2019 for Tom Van Berg.

Letruska, 12 for 16 with no seconds and one third for Fausto Gutierrez, adds to the pace, winning an Oaklawn allowance last April 16 in frontrunning style, while Cox also brings back Oaklawn’s last-out Pippin winner, Getridofwhatailesu.

The Azeri is the track’s last major prep for the Grade 1 $1 million Apple Blossom Handicap, which for its April 17 running may bring back Monomoy Girl, last-out winner of Oaklawn’s Grade 3 Bayakoa.

Two ungraded stakes races Saturday pit older males with seven in the $500,000 Essex Handicap (race 7, 3:08 p.m.) and 10 in the $150,000 Temperence Hill (race, 9, 4:13 p.m.). Either could produce starters for the Grade 2 $1 million Oaklawn Handicap at a mile and an eighth April 17. Defending champion Night Ops, trained by Cox, goes in the mile-and-sixteenth Essex while the Eclipse Award-winning trainer sends out Plainsman in the mile-and-a-half Temperence Hill.

In what could be an emotional day for Hot Springs lumberman John Ed Anthony, the master of Shortleaf Stables honors his first of three Eclipse Award and Arkansas Derby winners while sending out Plainsman in the Temperene Hill and, ater, Caddo River in the Rebel.

Caddo River, by Hard Spun out of the Anthony-raced mare Pangburn, won the Smarty Jones by 10 1/4 lengths on Oaklawn’s Jan. 22 opening card. Cox, for one, wants assurances the colt can stretch his natural speed in the Rebel and become the trainer’s third 2021

Kentucky Derby hopeful, joining champion Essential Quality and Mandaloun. With Essential Quality possibly traveling for his last Derby prep, Caddo River, breaking from the rail post Saturday, could become Cox’s main Arkansas Derby contender.

Keepmeinmind improved on his Breeders’ Cup Juvenile third at Keeneland with a season-ending triumph in the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club. A Churchill Downs maiden winner like Caddo River, Keepmeinmind (by Laoban) got a patient ride from David Cohen in a ninth-to-first rush Nov. 28 under the twin spires in Louisville.

Diodoro pointed Keepmeinmind to the Rebel when weather halted Oaklawn training and the trainer elected not to ship to New Orleans for the Grade 2 Risen Star, for which the colt had an outside post.

Baffert, the Rebel winner last year with Nadal, uses the Rebel as Concert Tour’s twoturn debut and takes a shot with Feb. 15 Santa Anita maiden winner Hozier.

Concert Tour, by Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, races in the silks of Gary and Mary West, who won an Arkansas Derby with Rockamundo and finished second in the 2019 Rebel with the Baffert-trained juvenile champion Game Winner.

Representing Asmussen in the Rebel are Super Stock, a Grade 1-placed son of Dialed In, and Big Lake, here making his stakes debut. Completing the field are Get Her Number, off since winning the Grade 1 American Pharoah in September

at Santa Anita and with Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano riding for Peter Miller, and Feb. 11 Oakawn allowance winner Twilight Blue for Joe Sharp.

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Kentucky Derby qualifying points Horse (Trainer);Points

1. Greatest Honour (McGaughey);60

2. Life Is Good (Baffert);60

3. Mandaloun (B. Cox);52

4. Weyburn (Jerkens);50

5. Helium (M. Casse);50

6. Essential Quality (B. Cox);50

7. Medina Spirit (Baffert);34

8. Midnight Bourbon (Asmussen);26

9. Proxy (Stidham);24

10. Hidden Stash (V. Oliver);22

11. Crowded Trade (C. Brown);20

12. Keepmeinmind (Diodoro);18

13. Spielberg (Baffert);17

14. Rombauer (M. McCarthy);13

15. Capo Kane (Wyner);12

16. Papetu (Sano);11

17. Moonlite Strike (Joseph);11

18. Hot Rod Charlie (O’Neill);10

19. Get Her Number (P. Miller);10

20. Sittin On Go (Romans);10 Horses listed in bold have raced or are entered at Oaklawn Racing Casino and Resort.