Split Derby keeps unbeaten Baffert pair apart
Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert enters two unbeaten colts in the Arkansas Derby but isn’t the only horseman with a chance to sweep the Grade 1 race, which Oaklawn Park split on Sunday.
Baffert has the probable favorite in both divisions with Charlatan making his stakes debut from the rail in the first and Nadal then hoping to emulate American Pharoah’s
2015 Oaklawn sweep of the Arkansas Derby and Rebel. Charlatan, sired by champion sprinter Speightstown, has two California victories by a combined 16 lengths.
Nadal, named after tennis star Rafael Nadal, won the Grade 2 $1 million Rebel March
14 by three quarters of a length in his first race outside California. That earned the colt (who officially turns 3 today) 50 points for a possible start in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, rescheduled for Sept.
5 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nadal’s sire, Blame, handed racemare Zenyatta her only defeat in 20 starts in the 2010
Breeders’ Cup Classic going a mile and a quarter at Churchill Downs.
Nadal drew post five in the second division, keeping jockey Joel Rosario. Martin Garcia rides Charlatan, a March 2 foal and unraced as a 2-year-old like his stablemate. Baffert has won the Arkansas Derby twice, Bodemeister (2012) following future Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Baffert scored a second Triple Crown in four years in 2018 with Justify, the first Kentucky Derby winner 1882 not to run as a juvenile.
Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen, Todd Pletcher and Peter Eurton also have multiple entries with Eurton sending out champion Storm the Court in the second division under Flavien Prat. Storm the Court is winless in two starts as a 3-year-old after the Court Appeal’s 45-1 upset in November’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita. The California-based Eurton, whose daughter Britney appears on the NBC/ TVG broadcast team that will televise the Arkansas Derby, entered last-out Oaklawn winner Shooters Shoot in the first division. Joe Talamo rides.
Asmussen, a three-time Arkansas Derby winner, has two horses in each division. Ricardo Santana Jr., the trainer’s go-to rider, has the call on Basin in the first division and Silver Prospector in the second. Asmussen also entered Jungle Runner (Tyler Baze, first half) and Code Runner (Stewart Elliott).
Basin returned in the Rebel, placing third, after not starting since his Grade 1 Hopeful victory at Saratoga in early September. Silver Prospector’s Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club victory in November came at the expense of leading Kentucky Derby contender Tiz the Law. The Declaration of War colt’s Grade 3 Southwest victory Feb. 17 at Oaklawn was enhanced when runner-up Wells Bayou captured the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby next time out.
Pletcher, with a record five Arkansas Derby victories, is represented by Gouverneur Morris (first division) and recent Oaklawn Stakes runner-up Farmington
Road. Gouverneur Morris won impressively on closing day at Saratoga and finished second to highly regarded Maxfield (who has not raced since) in Keeneland’s Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity in October. John Velazquez rides Gouverneur Morris and former Hall of Famer Javier Castellano is aboard Farmington Road, who closed dramatically for second last time behind surprise winner Breaking News.
Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby winner King Guillermo (jockey Samuel Camacho Jr.) and Wells Bayou (Florent Geroux) are likely pace factors in the second division against Nadal, who held on in the Rebel after a blistering 46-second opening half.
To conserve the horse’s speed at longer distances (the Arkansas Derby at nine furlongs compared to the Rebel’s mile and sixteenth), Baffert has worked Nadal in company at Santa Anita. The Hall of Famer applied the same tactic successfully with American Pharoah, the Pioneerof the Nile colt winning the Rebel on the lead (and in the slop, which Nadal also encountered) and the Arkansas Derby from just off the pace.