Whitmore belongs with track’s best

A few things you should know about Whitmore, whom the city of Hot Springs might consider leading its Christmas parade this year.

• He was not formerly named Scotch or Soda, the two horses that pulled the sulky in which a flamboyant Hot Springs mayor of yesteryear rode daily down Central Avenue.

• He was not around when people watched Milton Berle on Tuesday nights or boxing matches Friday nights on blackand-white television. He is instead a child of podcasts and the internet that racing fans in Bonnerdale or Borneo can appreciate.

• And though his boss, Ron Moquett, is a big Razorback fan, we have no idea whether he preferred Sam Pittman, Gus Malzahn or someone else as the University of Arkansas’ football coach last time around.

But say this for him: If a Mount Rushmore is built to honor the most popular horses to race in Hot Springs, Whitmore goes up there with Smarty Jones, Zenyatta and a fourth selection of your choice.

Whitmore, if you do not know, is a 7-year-old who never went through a sales ring and, as a gelding, never will top a list of progeny sires. His sire, Pleasantly Perfect, won the

2003 Breeders’ Cup Classic and earned more than $7 million. His maternal grandsire, Scat Daddy, sired the most recent Triple Crown winner, Justify. But in one of those genetic flukes that defies pedigree experts, Whitmore’s dam, Melody’s Spirit, did not earn a dime on the track — she never raced.

Like some other wayward youths, be they with two or four legs, Whitmore took a while to find his true calling. Not until the gelding’s 4-year-old season, when some of his contemporaries (the foal crop of 2013) were at stud, did Moquett, Whitmore’s trainer and part-owner, locate his hole card. Once seen as a route horse, the chestnut was converted into a speedster. Doubt you’ll find many other horses with the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup Sprint in their past performances.

Whitmore was mighty good when second in the Grade 3 Southwest and Grade 2 Rebel and third in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby during the 2016 Oaklawn meeting (Creator, that year’s Arkansas Derby winner, captured the Belmont Stakes). The six-month freshening Whitmore received after beating one horse in Nyquist’s Kentucky Derby produced a magnificent stretch of racing with six straight victories. But as a sprinter, not as a router.

The early insight came in December of his 3-year-old season when Whitmore jogged home by 1 1/2 lengths going 6

1/2 furlongs at Aqueduct Racecourse in New York. The true bill followed in the gelding’s first start at 4, an Oaklawn race in which he did not earn black type but received a knowing nod from racing insiders.

With Jose Ortiz aboard, Whitmore crushed a good field of allowance horses by 2 3/4 lengths on the first Sunday of the 2017 meeting. Though the skies were foggy, the toteboard clearly read 1:08 4-5. Oaklawn’s fastest six furlongs in January (officially 1:08.81) came over a racing surface still feeling the effects of winter, rated fast that day but hardly glib. Bigger victories, some in faster time, lay ahead for Whitmore but none that impressed more than his most recent performance.

Before Saturday, three other horses had won Oaklawn’s Count Fleet Sprint Handicap two times. Dave’s Friend, the

1983 and ‘84 winner, truly sang for his supper, winning 35 times and, before purses skyrocketed, requiring 76 starts to surpass $1 million in career earnings. Bordonaro won a Grade 1 race in California for trainer Bill Spawr between his Count Fleet victories at 5 and 6 in 2006 and 2007. Semaphore Man, an Oaklawn maiden winner at 3 in 2005 for Kelly Von Hemel, took the 2008 and 2009 Count Fleet in his 6

and 7-year-old seasons.

Some horses never win seven stakes or earn $1 million in a lifetime, much less at one track. That’s Whitmore’s legacy in a 34race career that he has banked more than $3 million. To now, his surpassing triumph is the 2018 Grade 1 Forego at historic Saratoga in upstate New York.

From the same crop, 1970, as Secretariat, Forego reached superstardom in his 4-year-old season when Horse of the Year (he would repeat at 5 and 6), champion older male and champion older sprinter. Forego kept going until 8, retiring as the sport’s top moneymaker, doing his greatest work going long and under high weight. Whitmore also got better as he grew older but as a sprinter, and under lesser weight than some who carried the proverbial grandstand, thus a comparison with the Old Boy of the East does not drive one’s imagination.

A local challenge emerged when Mitole raced at Oaklawn as a 3-year-old in 2018. A son of Eskendereya — a favorite for the 2010 Kentucky Derby before sidelined by injury — Mitole beat maidens by 10 lengths in his second local start with a Beyer Speed Figure of 96. Like Moquett with Whitmore, but earlier in the horse’s career, Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen saw Mitole as a deluxe sprinter. By the time he won Oaklawn’s Bachelor Stakes against an April headwind, some were predicting a Grade 1 victory, perhaps a championship, for Mitole in his 3-year-old season.

Those milestones would not come for Mitole until he turned

4, an Eclipse Award as champion sprinter following a campaign that he won four Grade 1 stakes including the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. The

2019 Count Fleet, a virtual match race, hinged on Mitole’s superior early speed and Whitmore’s inability to both duel for the lead and not compromise his standard late kick. Mitole prevailed by 2 3/4 lengths over the two-time defending Count Fleet winner, Asmussen calling the winner “an elite caliber horse.”

That was Whitmore’s first Oaklawn first defeat sprinting. Racing commendably later in

2019, although not winning, Whitmore was second again on his favorite track when Share the Upside, another Asmussen trainee, spoiled his first King Cotton Stakes appearance in February. Some thought Whitmore, like so many good sprinters before him, had lost a step.

We can see now that Whitmore, whose 6-year-old campaign included a Breeders’ Cup Sprint third-place finish, was good as ever. A month after the Breeders’ Cup, Moquett wheeled him back in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile Handicap at Aqueduct. Though seventh at an unfamiliar distance, Whitmore came to Oaklawn full of pep. Momentous things lay ahead.

Whitmore had not won since the previous year’s Hot Springs Stakes when, in March, he won it for a record fourth time. Settling the score with Share the Upside (which he could not do with Mitole) in 1:08.54 (his personal best in the race), Whitmore won before an estimated crowd of 21,000. From the infield and the grandstand, I have seldom heard such cheering.

What an ovation then Whitmore would have received after drawing a third Count Fleet card from the deck. Though not the betting favorite at post time (“How did he ever pay $8.20?” said an Oaklawn stakes-winning trainer after checking the prices), Whitmore crossed the wire by three quarters of a length in 1:08.95.

“I’ve been fortunate to ride this horse three times, and to be honest, each time he’s felt even stronger,” said jockey Joe Talamo. “Hat’s really off to Ron Moquett.”

Moquett, watching from home with the Oaklawn grandstand closed a fifth Saturday because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said the cheering continued into the night with people driving by his home shouting, “Go, Whitmore!” and “Whitmore’s a champion.”

The only thing that might be gaining on Whitmore is Father Time. But that ancient rival of humans and animals alike is advised to save something for the stretch if he and Whitmore meet at Oaklawn.