Lovely Maria wins the Oaks
Kerwin Clark’s biggest career win initially left him tearful, reflective and eventually grateful. He can thank Lovely
Maria for bringing all those feelings out in an association that has yielded success for both in big ways, especially in the $1 million Kentucky Oaks.
In the mix throughout the premier race for 3-year-old fillies Friday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., Lovely Maria burst past Angela Renee in the final furlong for a 2¾-length victory that had the 56-year-old jockey emotional in the winner’s circle.
“I’ve been riding for 40 years and won my first Grade 1 [Ashland] last month at Keeneland with this horse,” Clark said afterward. “Then we won this race. I am very blessed. Blessed to have this horse, blessed to have trainer
Larry Jones in my life and believing in me and to have [owner Brereton] Jones believe in me and stick with me.”
To say nothing of the mutual faith between Lovely
Maria and Clark, who has ridden all eight of her starts. They now have their fourth win together with three seconds and a fourth, this one achieved on racing’s most storied track in the 141st running of the Oaks.
They also gave the trainer and the owner, a former
Kentucky governor, their third Oaks victories. Making it doubly sweet for Larry Jones was having his other horse, I’m a Chatterbox, finish third.
Not a bad day considering Jones had a serious head injury from a fall last year that briefly left him in
a coma.
“They told me I didn’t need to be riding anymore,” Jones added. “I told them, I don’t think riding is the problem. It is the falling off that’s really the problem.”
Clark guided Lovely Maria over 1⅛ miles in 1:50.45 and paid $14.60, $7.80 and $5.40. Shook Up returned $20.20 and $11.40, and I’m a Chatterbox paid $5 to show.
Derby contender out
El Kabeir’s sore foot knocked the horse out of the Kentucky Derby. The gray colt did not have his usual jog Friday and Justin Zayat, son of owner Ahmed Zayat, later said on Twitter that “it looks like he might be getting a foot abscess or a foot bruise” in his left front foot. That put trainer John Terranova in a race against the clock to resolve the problem. Late Friday afternoon, he notified Kentucky Horse Racing Commission stewards that the horse was scratched. That reduces today’s field to 19. Horses will slide down and leave the No. 1 post position against the rail open. The defection came too late for Tale of Verve, the second also-eligible Derby horse. Friday’s 9 a.m. scratch deadline came and went with the field still intact.
The rules prevent any horses being added to the race after that.
Jock on the clock
Many riders have mounts at more than one track over the course of a weekend. Few travel as far as Christophe Soumillon, the jockey for Mubtaahij in the Derby. He has also booked assignments at Longchamp Racecourse Sunday in Paris. As soon as the Derby is over, a police escort will hustle Soumillon to the Louisville airport where a private jet will whisk him to Teterboro Airport in northern New Jersey. From there, a limo will be waiting for the drive to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens to catch the last flight to Paris. He is scheduled to land at noon in France, where another car will take him to Longchamp in time for racing to start at 1:30 p.m. Soumillon might sneak in a quick nap. His first mount is at 3 p.m. in the Prix Ganay.