Familiar Oaklawn cast seeks Fifth Season
Four Oaklawn stakes winners, three with different trainers, are among nine older horses in an especially contentious $150,000 Fifth Season today.
Take Concert Tour, the 5-2 program favorite, for instance. When last seen locally, he ran a tiring third in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby after winning the Grade 2 Rebel for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert. Off since the Preakness last May, the Street Sense colt starts today for Brad Cox after owner-breeders Gary and Mary West changed barns over the yearlong flap surrounding Baffert.
Cox seeks his second stakes victory of the meeting after taking last weekend’s Pippin with 4-year-old filly Coach, a twotime meet winner. Concert Tour keeps Joel Rosario in the saddle, his rider in two Grade 2 victories (one in California) before his Arkansas Derby fade at 1-5 favorite. Cox finished second in the Arkansas Derby with local stakes winner Caddo River, owned by Hot Springs lumberman John Ed Anthony.
Concert Tour is one of several high-profile horses leaving Baffert’s barn in the last year. Life Is Good won the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and Oaklawn maiden winner Following Sea the Grade 2 Vosburgh for Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher. A seven-time Kentucky Derby winner, Baffert is suspended through the 2023 Churchill Downs spring meeting with Medina Spirit’s 2021 race victory still undecided.
“I don’t have a clue how many horses (the Wests) sent me,” said Cox, Oaklawn’s leading trainer after 15 days of the 2021-22 meeting. “I can’t even keep track. We have a lot. They’re great to work with.”
The Fifth Season also drew Oaklawn stakes winners for trainer Steve Asmussen, Long Range Toddy (2019 Rebel first division) and Silver Prospector (2020 Grade 3 Southwest). Long Range Toddy is now with Dallas Stewart and joins Asmussen’s Snapper Sinclair, who with more than $1.85 million is the field’s leading winner. Owner Danny Caldwell sends out 9-year-old Rated R Superstar, the 2019 Essex Handicap winner he claimed for $50,000 off Cippy Contreras following an Oaklawn win last year; Caldwell, of Poteau, Okla., and trainer Federico Villafranco won the 2017 Fifth Season with ex-claimer Domain’s Rap.
Although not an Oaklawn stakes winner, Thomas Shelby missed by three quarters of a length against stablemate Lone Rock in the $200,000 Tinsel Dec. 18. The Curlin gelding won seven times last year, twice at Oaklawn, for trainer Robertino Diodoro, who called the Tinsel “the best race he’s run.” A speedy sort, Thomas Shelby
breaks from the rail post under David Cohen.
Completing the field are 2020 Kentucky Derby starter Necker Island, trained by Chris Hartman, and last-out Oaklawn winners Atoka (through disqualification) and Mucho. Post time for the Fifth Season, carded as race 8, is 3:46 p.m. and a wet track is possible on a day that rapidly changing weather conditions are likely. First post is 12:30 p.m.
Going a mile, 6-year-old Mucho makes his first start around two turns for trainer John Ortiz, who claimed the son of Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Blame for $80,000 in November 2020 at Churchill Downs. He comes off a Dec. 18 allowance-sprint win for owners WSS Racing (William Simon) and 4G Racing (Brent and Sharilyn Gasaway). Florent Geroux rides from post nine.
“To me, I don’t think distance is going to be an issue,” Ortiz said. “The only variable that we have here is going to be the two turns. Will he sprint out and run off or will he sprint out and be able to rate and either dictate the speed or just sit off the pace and use his sprint ability for the finish?”
Snapper Sinclair lost the 2020 Fifth Season by a neck and placed fifth in the 2019 race. Sixth in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, the City Zip 7-year-old ran fifth in the $100,000 Prairie Bayou Dec. 18 over Turfway Park’s synthetic surface.
“He had come out of the Breeders’ Cup in such great shape, and we didn’t really have a whole lot of options with him, and he had yet to run on a synthetic track,” co-owner Jeff Bloom said. “We just figured, ‘What the heck? Let’s give it a try.’ It was one of his extremely rare, sort of flat performances, so we just kind of draw a line through that one and refocus on the coming year.”
Rated R Superstar began his career as a Triple Crown prospect for trainer Ken McPeek, later becoming a multiple Grade 3 winner before claimed by Contreras for $62,500 in November 2018 at Churchill Downs. Tagged for $50,000 off a Jan. 30, 2021, Oaklawn victory, Rated R Superstar won the 2021 Governor’s Cup at Remington Park in owner Caldwell’s home state. David Cabrera rides from post two, and as with Domain’s Rap, Caldwell admits a preference for older horses as a reason behind the claims.
“He’s just such a professional,” Caldwell said of Rated R Superstar. “He’s professional racehorse is what he is. He knows his job, he loves his job, he loves to go out there and perform. I wish I had a barn full of horses like him.”