Secret Oath will try to stamp her ticket to the Kentucky Derby in Saturday's $1.25 million Arkansas Derby (G1) as she faces a field of eight male rivals. TVG will be live from Oaklawn Park with expanded coverage as well as on-site for the $1 million Curlin Florida Derby (G1) from Gulfstream Park and the $600,000 Jeff Ruby Steaks (G3) from Turfway Park as part of the Road to the Triple Crown presented by Spendthrift.
At Oaklawn Park, Mike Joyce, Gabby Gaudet, Caton Bredar and Matt Carothers will be trackside with full coverage of the card which features four stakes races culminating in the Arkansas Derby (G1), a top-tier Kentucky Derby prep with 100-40-20-10 qualifying points available to the top four finishers.
There will also be a special feature on Secret Oath and trainer D. Wayne Lukas. Lukas has won two prior editions of the Arkansas Derby and saddled the filly Althea to win the race in 1984. Coverage of the Oaklawn Park meet is presented by WinStar Farm.
Gulfstream Park, with coverage presented by Runhappy, will host one of their premier days of racing of the season on Saturday and TVG's Larry Collmus, Todd Schrupp, Britney Eurton, Simon Bray, Dave Weaver and Andie Biancone will be live with exclusive insights, analysis and interviews. There will also be additional, innovative technology to enhance the broadcast including a Drone Camera and two jockey cameras throughout the races in addition to a feature on jockey Tyler Gaffalione.
The fourteen-race card from Gulfstream features ten stakes races with the $1 million Curlin Florida Derby (G1) as the main event with 100-40-20-10 Kentucky Derby qualifying points available. Simplification has been installed as the 5-2 morning line favorite in the field of eleven Triple Crown hopefuls for trainer Antonio Sano. The Florida-bred son of Not This Time won the Fountain of Youth Stakes (G2) and will have Jose Ortiz aboard. His rivals include Holy Bull Stakes (G3) winner White Abarrio and Tampa Bay Derby (G2) victor Classic Causeway.
Road to the Triple Crown presented by Spendthrift continues at Turfway Park on Saturday night with the $600,000 Jeff Ruby Steaks (G3). There will be 100-40-20-10 Kentucky Derby qualifying points up for grabs to the top four finishers and TVG's Caleb Keller will be live throughout the card. The race has drawn an overflow field of thirteen including Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf (G1) winner Tiz the Bomb. Trained by Ken McPeek, the bay son of Hit It a Bomb was last seen winning the John Battaglia Memorial Stakes and will have regular rider Brian Hernandez, Jr. in the irons.
All three Kentucky Derby prep races will be designated as TVG Money Back Special races.
In addition to racing from Gulfstream Park, Oaklawn and Turfway, TVG will be featuring racing from Santa Anita, Aqueduct and more. Fans can tune in on TVG, TVG2 and the Watch TVG app which is available on Amazon Fire, Roku and connected Apple TV devices.
Having proven heads and shoulders above the local 3-year-old filly contingent, Briland Farm homebred Secret Oath (Arrogate) takes on the boys in Saturday's $1.25-million GI Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. The chestnut figures a warm favorite to become the first of her gender to win the race since her Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas saddled Althea (Alydar) to score by seven lengths in the 1984 renewal, with future GI Belmont S. runner-up Pine Circle (Cox's Ridge) and GI Preakness S. hero Gate Dancer (Sovereign Dancer) noses apart in second and third.
A maiden winner and fifth to GIII Fantasy S. hopeful Dream Lith (Medaglia d'Oro) in last year's GII Golden Rod S., Secret Oath has been nothing short of sensational in annexing three starts at this meet by a combined 23 lengths. A handy allowance winner on New Year's Eve, the chestnut pummeled her rivals by 7 1/4 lengths in the Jan. 29 Martha Washington S. and again in the GIII Honeybee S. Feb. 26, with eyecatching bursts on each occasion.
Her trainer, whose success with fillies like Althea, Derby winner Winning Colors and Serena's Song is well-documented–has been impressed with Secret Oath's development.
“She's got a running style and the efficiency of motion is good,” Lukas said. “She places herself in the race. I would say the thing that's probably the biggest concern would be a traffic problem. She's very rangy and tall. I don't know about starting and stopping. In the Honeybee, they shut her down, then just 'Boom!' She amazed me that when she dove into the rail [turning for home], she just [took off)].”
Now, to be fair to Althea, who has contributed mightily to the American Stud Book down the years, Secret Oath faces competition not nearly as deep as Althea did 38 years ago. The progressive We the People (Constitution) kicked clear to graduate by nearly six lengths on his one-mile debut Feb. 12 and doubled up with a five-length allowance tally Mar. 12, good for 'TDN Rising Star' honors. Those wishing to take a contrarian view will note that the bay colt tracked a very slow pace on the latter occasion and won off like a 2-5 chance should.
Doppelganger (Into Mischief) makes his first start for trainer Tim Yakteen Saturday and has form through Forbidden Kingdom (American Pharoah), to whom he was a disappointing fourth in the seven-furlong GII San Vicente S. Jan. 29 at Santa Anita before chasing home that rival to finish a distant second in the GII San Vicente S. Mar. 5. The blinkers come off this afternoon.
Un Ojo (Laoban) outran longshot odds to be second to the promising Early Voting (Gun Runner) in the Feb. 5 GIII Withers S. at Aqueduct and looked beaten in this track's GII Rebel S. before surging home on perhaps the best part of the strip to post a half-length success, with Barber Road (Race Day) third.
Cyberknife (Gun Runner) bounced back from a below-par sixth in the GIII Lecomte S. in January with a sound three-length allowance score at the Fair Grounds Feb. 19 and is bound to go off at a price shorter than his 8-1 morning line.
There was a time when you would load as much experience and conditioning as possible into a Kentucky Derby horse, as a mere adolescent required to jostle with 19 others through 10 furlongs. Nowadays, however, trainers are trying to reach Churchill Downs across a highwire stretched to a thread by two diametrically opposed imperatives. One is their conviction, whether through perception or presumption, that the typical, commercial-bred Thoroughbred of today can only stand up to a much lighter schedule. The other is to secure enough gate points in the trials.
In trying to reconcile this paradox, many horses reach this stage of the game with zero margin for error. For these the next two Saturdays, with six races carrying 170 starting points apiece, will be make-or-break. If you land a wide draw, or a rough trip, or an off track–well, tough. In some cases, to be fair, setbacks along the way will have left trainers no choice. But others have painted themselves into a corner by a witting trade-off between the benefits they perceive in conserving the gas, and the risk of the strategy backfiring.
What sets Bob Baffert apart, as the master of the modern Derby preparation, is his ability to fast-track even a horse as late onto the scene as Justify (Scat Daddy). It doesn't seem to matter that a lot of those Californian trials are too mildly contested to yield much in the way of useful experience. Somehow, whether by accident or design, his methods have proved ideally tailored to the changing demands of the race. Okay, so maybe even he could only hit with a winner as goofy as Authentic (Into Mischief) was in the GIII Sham S. because the Derby, that year, was delayed until September. Time after time, however, Baffert manages to drill raw horses to all the professionalism required to take control on the first Saturday in May.
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Now I realize that his regime is a demanding one. But if you don't like those Quarter Horse works, hard and fast, then how else do you propose getting a horse ready for the Louisville street fight after barely five minutes of competition? (Some or even most of which, moreover, will have been confined to maiden company.)
As I'm always complaining, carrying your speed in the Derby is nothing like as exacting, now that the sprinters have been excluded by the starting points system. This has surely assisted Baffert, whose horses so often just run the finish out of their pursuers. But it's not as though the race is now some kind of picnic.
The trials have always been a means to an end. They were dress rehearsals, a way of ensuring that the actors knew their lines blindfolded and had their timing tight. But the contradictory aspirations of many trainers today are muddling those ends and means. Their actors rehearse lying in the bath, mumbling to themselves from a soggy script. Trainers used to build up physical and mental fitness until their horses were ready to break down the door. Now they try to wedge it open just enough for horses to slip through with minimal effort.
Needless to say, there are a lot of outstanding horsemen out there applying themselves to the conundrum. It looks no coincidence, for instance, that the GII Louisiana Derby proved the deepest trial last year, having been extended to a mile and 3/16ths. That has created a useful compromise: the timing serves the conservatism of trainers, with 14 extra days of freshening relative to those running at Aqueduct, Keeneland and Santa Anita next week; while the distance, at the same time, gives the horses something valid to recover from.
Certainly those supervising Epicenter (Not This Time) have actually used his preps as just that: as preparation. They haven't viewed them merely as a way of securing a big day out, but as a tool for maximizing his chance of actually getting that blanket of roses. Admittedly they have hardly explored his versatility, in terms of surface, albeit he broke his maiden on the one that stages the Derby. But he has been learning about his vocation all winter, notably from a speed ambush in the GIII Lecomte S., and was able to make a slick adjustment to a different running style last Saturday.
This year, of course, the Baffert horses have themselves been left without wriggle-room in terms of starting points, having been ineligible to bank any before their recent move to other barns. As a former assistant who shared his transition from Quarter Horses, however, Tim Yakteen has worked his new recruits in seamless fashion, sending Doppelganger (Into Mischief) into the GI Arkansas Derby with five furlongs in a minute flat, to follow six furlongs in 1:10.8 the previous week.
Lukas alongside his latest star filly this week | Coady
As it happens, the ultimate pioneer from the Quarter Horse world also has this single shot to get to the Kentucky Derby, though again the circumstances are highly unusual. As we've remarked before, a bold experiment with the filly Secret Oath (Arrogate) could yet redeem our whole community, single-handed, from an apparently endless streak of hideous headlines. If she can proceed to the Derby as one of the favorites, it will scarcely matter whether or not she can actually win, so long as D. Wayne Lukas gets a platform to intrigue, win round and ultimately inspire outsiders in the days before the race. But if she can excel, then perhaps the old master may have some timely lessons for his timid juniors within the business, as well.
The principal purpose of these proving grounds, remember, is to ensure that the next generation of breeders can work with properly tested genes. Charismatic (Summer Squall)–the fourth but perhaps not the last of Lukas's Derby winners–learned on the job to the extent that he took six attempts to break his maiden at two, and his Derby trail then comprised starts on Dec. 27, Jan. 16, Jan. 31, Feb. 11, Feb. 19, Mar. 6, Apr. 3 and Apr. 18. This was 1999, not 1949, and how blessed we all are that the Coach is still here to show the kids how it can be done.
We all marveled at Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow)'s latest reiteration of his toughness and courage in Dubai last weekend. Nobody could call his sire a commercial hit. But who was it that showed us that Oxbow, one of the few good horses he has been sent in recent years, could soak up 13 starts inside 12 months? Who was it who reminded everyone that you're still allowed to run in all three legs of the Triple Crown, and run 6-1-2, even if you don't win the first?
Good luck to you, then, Mr. Lukas–because with this filly, your luck is everybody's luck.
A federal judge has dismissed the constitutionality lawsuit brought against the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, reports the Thoroughbred Daily News.
Initiated a year ago by the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association and 12 of its affiliates, the dismissed lawsuit is separate from a similar legal challenge brought by a collection of state racing commissions and attorneys general, which also has a motion to dismiss pending.
“The Court recognizes that HISA's regulatory model pushes the boundaries of public/private Collaboration,” wrote United States District Court Judge James Wesley Hendrix in his Mar. 31 Northern District of Texas order. “The Court also acknowledges the dramatic change that HISA imposes nationwide on the Thoroughbred horseracing industry. But that change resulted from a decision of the people through Congress. And despite its novelty, the law as constructed stays within current constitutional limitations as defined by the Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit.”
No appeal has yet been filed.
Hendrix continued: “Although the Horsemen make compelling arguments that HISA goes too far, only appellate courts may expand or constrict their precedent. This Court cannot. And under current frameworks, HISA stays within constitutional boundaries.”
Statement from James L. Gagliano on the Federal Court's Upholding of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act:
The Jockey Club congratulates the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and its counsel on the Federal Texas District Court's finding that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 is indeed constitutional.
For those long supporting the passage and implementation of the Act, this is a result we have long anticipated. To HISA Chairman Charlie Scheeler, CEO Lisa Lazarus, and the entire HISA team and its counsel, we express our gratitude for your continued dedication to the cause of equine safety and integrity in our sport. We look forward to HISA beginning the first prong of its programs to enhance our sport on July 1.
