Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Santana top rider for 2014
HOT SPRINGS — Ricardo Santana Jr. (jockey) and Steve Asmussen (trainer) repeated as champions for the 53-day live meeting at Oaklawn Park that ended Saturday.
Santana, 21, won 59 races to capture his second consecutive riding title. He also led all jockeys in purse earnings ($2,561,193) and won a meet-high nine stakes races.
Santana rode 34 winners for Asmussen, who captured his third consecutive Oaklawn training title — and sixth since 2007 — with 35 victories.
Santana and Asmussen teamed for four victories Saturday. Asmussen has won 26 races on Arkansas Derby Day since 2007.
Danny Caldwell won his first Oaklawn owner’s title with 24 victories. Caldwell, who lives in Poteau, Okla., 25 miles southwest of Fort Smith, is a perennial leading owner at Remington Park in Oklahoma City.
Oaklawn will be open only for gaming today, Monday and Tuesday before off-season simulcasting resumes Wednesday.
Oaklawn will begin construction Monday on a 50-percent expansion of space dedicated to electronic skill-based games, a project at the south end of the building scheduled to be completed around Thanksgiving.
The Arkansas Racing Commission, at its regularly scheduled meeting Saturday morning, approved 57 live racing dates for Oaklawn in 2015 (Jan. 9-April 11).
Claim wars
Maybe the most active claiming meet in Oaklawn history ended with Saturday’s closing-day card.
The 423 claims made during the 53-day season totaled $6,253,000.
Those figures eclipsed the 2006 meeting (351 and $6,118,005), where numbers were skewed after Oaklawn became a melting pot for trainers displaced by Hurricane Katrina. There was no racing that season at Fair Grounds in New Orleans.
Oaklawn had 333 claims totaling $4,934,750 at last year’s 54-day meeting.
Saturday’s nine claims included Skinny ($7,500) for trainer Nevada Litfin, who won a meet-high 26-way shake, or blind draw, for the 4-year-old colt.
“It’s been crazy,” Oaklawn General Manager Eric Jackson said of the 2014 claiming.
Trainers said Oaklawn’s lucrative purse structure fueled intense claiming activity.
Horses running in $5,000 claiming races, for example, could earn $10,800 with a victory.
Rulings
Stewards fined trainer Tom Proctor $1,000 after one of his horses tested positive for a prohibited racing substance last month.
Please Explain was disqualified from her thirdplace finish in the $150,000 Grade III Honeybee Stakes for 3-year-old fillies March 8 after blood and urine samples contained methylprednisolone, a synthesized adrenal steroid that is given systemically to decrease inflammatory and immune responses in horses.
In addition, stewards ordered Please Explain unplaced and redistributed purse money. The ruling doesn’t affect pari-mutuel payoffs.
Stewards, who released the ruling early Saturday afternoon, acted on a report from Truesdail Laboratories of Tustin, Calif., the official testing laboratory of the Arkansas Racing Commission.
Proctor requested a split sample (blood) be sent to Industrial Laboratories in Wheat Ridge, Colo., which confirmed the presence of methylprednisolone.
Proctor waived his right to a hearing before stewards.
Please Explain was based in Florida this winter before shipping to Oaklawn to run in the Honeybee.
State steward Stan Bowker told the commission that Florida medication laws “are pretty lax,” adding the filly received methylprednisolone too close to the race to have it clear her system in time.
Please Explain had earned $15,000 with her third-place finish in the Honeybee. She remained at Oaklawn after the race to train for the $400,000 Grade III Fantasy Stakes on April 5. She ran seventh in the Fantasy.
Bowker told the commission that two additional positive tests have come back, but stewards are awaiting results of a split-sample testing before issuing any rulings.
Final furlong
Rainbow Miss winner Delta Flower was flown to California on Tuesday and went to the track Thursday at Santa Anita near Los Angeles, said the 3-year-old filly’s co-owner, Richard Robertson of Camden. She is now with Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer. Delta Flower had been owned and trained by Stanley Roberts of Forrest City before he sold her privately last month. … Hal Wiggins, the original trainer of 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexander, visited Oaklawn last week. Wiggins has worked near his home as a jockey agent at Sam Houston Race Park in Houston following his retirement from training in late 2009. Wiggins, however, left the door open for a comeback. “It would have to the right time, the right opportunity,” Wiggins said. Wiggins’ son, trainer Lon Wiggins, saddled Sammy’s Bandit to win Saturday’s first race. … Equibase representative Jeff Taylor, a Perryville native and longtime Oaklawn chart caller, is relocating to Evangeline Downs in Louisiana. Taylor, following the Oaklawn meeting, had worked as a chart caller the past 31 years at Louisiana Downs near Shreveport. … Taylor Radiamer, a member of Oaklawn’s clocking team, said he will be the identifier at the Presque Isle meet in Pennsylvania.