HOT SPRINGS -- Lest the home city think itself overlooked on the local racing schedule, the Hot Springs Stakes is back at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort. And on this April 1, that is no joke.
One of three stakes on today's 13-race card before the Grade I $1.25 million Arkansas Derby, the Spa City is honored with a streamlined edition of an event dating to 1945. If anything, track officials may have made it Whitmore-proof, restricting it to 3-year-olds and lengthening the distance from six furlongs to a mile.
They quickly renamed the Hot Springs after champion Whitmore's 2021 retirement at age 8, also naming a barn in his honor. The previous race, for older sprinters and boosted to Grade II, recently had its second running, and the horse holds court at Oaklawn for nearby owners Ron Moquett (his trainer and co-owner) and wife Laura.
The Hot Springs Stakes retains the $200,000 purse for which it was last run. Besides the Derby, it joins Grade III runnings of the $600,000 Fantasy and $400,000 Oaklawn Mile on the Derby undercard.
The Hot Springs brings together five meet winners out of the seven horses entered. All race without Lasix bleeder medication and all but two-time meet winner Cactus is nominated to the Triple Crown, for which late entries were accepted this week.
Steve Asmussen-trained Gun Pilot and Powerful were seventh and ninth, respectively, in the Grade II $1 million Rebel Stakes on Feb. 25 at Oaklawn, from which runner-up Red Route One returns in the Arkansas Derby with a stablemate. A maiden winner at Churchill Downs, Gun Pilot (by supersire Gun Runner) won an Oaklawn allowance Feb. 4 by two lengths over Arkansas Derby starter Bourbon Bash. Ricardo Santana Jr. keeps the mount, unable to do much with a ground-saving trip in the Rebel.
Frosted Departure was one of trainer Ken McPeek's four winners on the track's first all-juvenile card Dec 31. Powerful beat him at 61/2 furlongs in the Ed Brown at Churchill before Frosted's son ran in the first of his four Oaklawn stakes, then beating Arkansas Derby starters Two Eagles River and Bourbon Bash going six furlongs in the Renaissance.
Bob Baffert sends out Carmel Road, a Del Mar maiden winner and runner-up in December's Grade IILos Alamitos Futurity. Eighth last time in a roughly run Grade II Gotham, Quality Road's son has a Santa Anita workout since racing in New York.
Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas owns and trains Oaklawn winner Rocking Rocket, bred by Arkansan Frank Fletcher and sired by American Pharoah.
Carded as race 8 and at 4:18 p.m., the Hot Springs looms as a possible prep for the May 20 Preakness and other spring stakes for 3-year-olds.
Rick Lee's analysis and selections
8 The Hot Springs. Purse $200,000, 1 mile, 3-year-olds
CACTUS** is unbeaten in a two-race sprint career, and the determined colt is bred to be more effective around two turns. GUN PILOT was a clear allowance winner at this distance two races back, and he may have been overmatched when seventh-best on a sloppy track in the GII Rebel. EYEING CLOVER dominated entry-level allowance sprinters at Fair Grounds, and he is having blinkers removed after being too close to a fast pace in the GIII Gotham at Aqueduct.
PP HORSEJOCKEYTRAINERODDS
4 CactusBejaranoMorse8-1
3 Gun PilotSantanaAsmussen7-2
2 Eyeing CloverGerouxCox5-2
6 Carmel RoadVelazquezBaffert3-1
5 Frosted DeparturePratMcPeek9-2
7 Rocking RocketGutierrezLukas12-1
1 PowerfulGaffalioneAsmussen12-1