Ron Moquett | Horse Racing Free Tips

Moquett Derby Dreaming As Trainer And Co-Owner Of Osbourne

Whitmore had been trainer Ron Moquett's stable star until the 2020 Breeders' Cup Sprint winner and 2020 champion male sprinter was retired earlier this year because of a leg injury.

Now, another chestnut gelding will try to pick up the slack. Moquett said Tuesday morning that lightly raced Osbourne will make his 3-year-old and stakes debut in the $250,000 Smarty Jones Jan. 1, Oaklawn's first of four Kentucky Derby points races.

A son of Oaklawn stakes winner Tapiture, Osbourne broke his maiden at seven furlongs Nov. 17 at Churchill Downs in his last start. Osbourne, in his only start, finished second to Howling Time in a maiden special weights sprint Sept. 25 at Churchill Downs. Howling Time returned to win the $200,000 Street Sense Stakes at 1 1/16 miles Oct. 31 at Churchill Downs to remain unbeaten in two lifetime starts.

“He's a good horse,” Moquett said, referring to Osbourne.

Moquett (Southern Springs Stables) co-owns Osbourne, who is now based at Oaklawn in advance of his scheduled two-turn debut in the one-mile Smarty Jones. The race previously had been run in mid to late January before all of Oaklawn's Kentucky Derby points races were moved up on the 2021-22 stakes calendar, including the $1 million Arkansas Derby (G1) April 2, in conjunction with Oaklawn opening in December for the first time in history. The Arkansas Derby is now five weeks before the Kentucky Derby. It had been three weeks since 1996.

“At the end of the day, that's what's great when Southern Springs owns them,” Moquett said. “We just do whatever the horse says. He came out of the race very good. We'll just point that direction and see what happens.”

Moquett owns Osbourne in a partnership that includes the estate of Floyd Sagely. A star football player during the early 1950s at the University of Arkansas, Sagely died three days before Osbourne's career debut. He was 89.

“Really cool dude, too,” said Moquett, who had trained approximately a year for Sagely. “He went to Ten Mile (Oaklawn's satellite training center about 25 miles east of Hot Springs) and saw his horses this summer. It was a shocking deal whenever he died because I had just got through seeing him.”

Moquett said he has two other horses for Sagely's estate – Trident Hit, who finished fourth in the $100,000 Jeffrey A. Hawk Memorial Stakes for 3-year-olds and up last Friday at Remington Park, and Massard, an unraced 2-year-old filly by champion Nyquist. Moquett said Massard is the name of the street Sagely resided on in Fort Smith, Ark.

The Smarty Jones will offer 17 points (10-4-2-1) to the top four finishers toward starting eligibility for the Kentucky Derby. Nominations close Dec. 17.

Moquett won the 2015 Smarty Jones with Far Right, who finished 15^th in the Kentucky Derby.

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Champion Whitmore Returns To Oaklawn With New Goal In Mind

Whitmore won Oaklawn's Hot Springs Stakes for older sprinters a record four times and if the feisty 8-year-old gelding cooperates, he'll be leading the field again in 2022.

Whitmore has returned to Arkansas, but instead of preparing for the Hot Springs, a race he won in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, the now-retired Eclipse Award winner is about to take baby steps toward a possible second career as a stable pony for Ron Moquett, who trained the gelding and campaigned him in partnership with Robert LaPenta and Head of Plains Partners (Sol Kumin).

“Our ultimate goal, right now, the short-term goal, is have him lead the post parade for the Whitmore,” Moquett said Tuesday morning. “That's our goal, Doesn't mean we're going to do it. It just means we're trying.”

Oaklawn announced in early September that it had renamed the Hot Springs to honor Whitmore, the 2020 Breeders' Cup Sprint winner, the country's champion male sprinter of 2020 and among the most popular and successful horses in Oaklawn history. The inaugural $200,000 Whitmore Stakes is March 19, a centerpiece of “Whitmore Day.” Oaklawn also renamed the Count Fleet barn, Whitmore's longtime home in Hot Springs, after the gelding.

Whitmore was retired after suffering a leg injury during a fifth-place finish in the $600,000 Forego Stakes (G1) Aug. 28 at Saratoga. A chestnut son of Pleasantly Perfect, Whitmore bankrolled $4,502,350 – 88^th in North American history through Tuesday – after winning 15 of 43 starts. Much of Whitmore's best work came at Oaklawn, where he compiled a 9-6-1 record from 16 starts and earned $1,752,600. Whitmore also won Oaklawn's signature race for older sprinters, $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3), a record three times (2017, 2018 and 2020). Swift Ruler, a local star during the 1960s, is the only other horse in Oaklawn history with seven career stakes victories.

Moquett said Whitmore was sent to Rebecca Maker's equine rehabilitation and breaking facility in Kentucky following the Forego. Whitmore has normally decompressed there the last several years before returning to Oaklawn – his winter home at every meeting since 2016 – to begin preparing for a new campaign.

Moquett said his wife/assistant Laura will be trying to re-train Whitmore for pony work, which encompasses escorting horses to and from the track during morning training hours. She was Whitmore's regular exercise rider.

“I have no idea,” Ron Moquett said, when asked if he believed Whitmore knows he's not running again. “This is kind of the same schedule he's been on. We're hoping he does. We're going to feed him different. Obviously, he's going to leave every day and come back.”

Moquett said Whitmore could eventually occupy his same stall in the renamed barn and be re-trained at Oaklawn or sent to more tranquil surroundings at the track's satellite training center about 25 miles east of Hot Springs, where the trainer keeps horses. Moquett said Whitmore left Kentucky Tuesday and is now at the training center. The gelding will return to Oaklawn after Thanksgiving, Moquett said.

Whitmore was a noted bad actor at two and gelded before his first start. Although he mellowed with age, Whitmore would buck and kick before loading into the starting gate for some races.

“We couldn't get him around the track as a 2-year-old, so he's changed a whole lot,” Laura Moquett said the morning after Whitmore won the 2020 Count Fleet. “We can actually train him now. He's softened his edges a little. He still has the tattoos of the barbed wire around his arm, but he has like a heart and mom on there as well now.”

Ron Moquett said Whitmore will now be going back to school, with his wife as tutor.

“Go out there and watch training,” he said. “Ride up there and sit there at the end of the day, when nobody's around, and watch a couple of horses train and then come back home. After a while, the hope is, he understands that this is what I do. I don't go train. Not go around kicking stuff. Laura will be on him. Laura's horse.”

Another former Ron Moquett trainee, Meanbone, successfully transitioned to pony work following his final career start in July 2020. Meanbone, a 9-year-old Silver Train gelding, worked as Moquett's stable pony during the 2021 Oaklawn meeting.

“We're just going to start like we did Meanbone,” Ron Moquett said. “Remember, he's a pony now and these other horses that we've re-homed and made ponies – we're going to try to do it with Whitmore and, hopefully, it sticks.”

Moquett said his wife would be aboard Whitmore to lead the post parade for the Whitmore Stakes, which is the final major local prep for the $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3) April 16. Whitmore ran second in both 6-furlong races in 2021.

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Cabrera Continues To Dominate Jockey Standings At Remington Park

Remington Park's three-time defending riding champion David Cabrera continues to reign dominantly at this Oklahoma City, Okla., track, winning four of the nine races on Saturday night.

Cabrera padded his lead in this year's standings to 25 wins to Stewart Elliott's 14. His four wins Saturday came with four different trainers – Karl Broberg, Ron Moquett, Austin Gustafson, and Danny Pish. Cabrera took both halves of the early Daily Double with Broberg-trained Tiz Showbiz (6-1 odds, $14.40 to win) in the first race and with Moquett's Pure Courage (8-5, $5.40) in the second. The $2 Daily Double paid $65. Cabrera rode Gustafson's first-time starter Steels All In (3-1, $8), hitting the line first in race five, as he did with Pish's Give It Everything (6-5, $4.60) in the eighth.

If that's not enough to solidify his riding prowess to fans, Cabrera, with all eight of his mounts Saturday, ran either first or second. The only race he didn't run first or second was the seventh race and he didn't have a mount in that race. He finished as the runner-up in the third, fourth, sixth, and ninth races.

It would have been five wins Saturday had Cabrera not been caught by a nose in the sixth race aboard Dont Float the Ice. Cabrera's mount had the lead the entire race except at the wire.

Cabrera, with his 25 victories, leads Elliott in second, 14; Leandro Goncalves, 12; Richard Eramia, 11; and Alfredo Triana, Jr. rounding out the top five. Elliott did his best to keep pace, winning two races on the Saturday program.

The trainers' race also is a tight one this meet with perennial winner Steve Asmussen scoring 11 wins thus far, followed by Broberg and Kari Craddock tied for second with eight each. Scott Young has seven and then tied for fifth are Danny Pish and Austin Gustafson with six victories each.

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Oaklawn To Celebrate Whitmore Day In 2022; Stakes Race, Barn To Be Named For Champion Sprinter

Oaklawn will celebrate the 2020 Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) winner and Champion Sprinter on March 19, 2022, with Whitmore Day highlighted by the $200,000 Whitmore Stakes. Formerly named the Hot Springs Stakes, Whitmore won the six-furlong race four times during his career for trainer Ron Moquett's Southern Springs Stable, Robert LaPenta, and Head of Plain Partners LLC. He also won the Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3) three times for a total of seven Oaklawn stakes wins, a record he shares with Swift Ruler.

In another move by Oaklawn to honor Whitmore, the Count Fleet barn, which was Whitmore's winter home for six years, will be renamed the Whitmore barn.

“Whitmore was truly Oaklawn's horse and we're excited to honor his accomplishments with Whitmore Day and the Whitmore Stakes next March,” President Louis Cella said. “It is rare for a horse to compete at the highest level for six straight years and Whitmore did just that, never backing down from a fight. This is why he has such a large following of fans not only in Arkansas but nationwide.”

Whitmore Day will also feature an appearance by the Champion, Whitmore t-shirts, and the first 5,000 fans will receive a commemorative Whitmore baseball card.

The now 8-year-old Whitmore won an Oaklawn allowance race in January 2016 in his 3-year-old debut and went on to place in the track's top 3-year-old stakes, which earned him a spot in that year's Kentucky Derby (G1). He did not race again until December 2016 when he won a six-furlong allowance race at Aqueduct, setting the stage for him to become one of the top sprinters in North America. Whitmore's other top wins included the 2017 Phoenix Stakes (G2) at Keeneland, and 2018 Forego Stakes (G1) at Saratoga. He retired in August with a career record of 15-13-5 in 43 starts and earnings of $4,502,350.

“Oaklawn has always been my home track and it was Whitmore's home track, so it's a huge honor to have a stakes race named for him here,” trainer Ron Moquett said. “He was a hard-knocking horse that a lot of people could easily root for whether they put a bet on him or not. The amount of support we have received since his retirement has been overwhelming.”

The 2021-2022 Oaklawn live meet runs Friday, Dec. 3 – Sunday, May 8. There is no racing Christmas week, Dec. 24 -26, or Easter Sunday, April 17.

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