A day after watching Super Saturday races across the nation, attention turns to Remington Park on Sunday for a 12 race card boasting 10 stakes and headlined by the Grade 3 Oklahoma Derby.
Worth $400,000, the Oklahoma Derby has attracted a field of 11 with some of the biggest trainers in the country – Steve Asmussen, Christophe Clement, and Todd Pletcher among them – sending runners. Pletcher’s shipment to Remington has a horse with a familiar pedigree in Wooderson, the Awesome Again half-brother to Horse of the Year and Hall of Famer Rachel Alexandra.
Lightly raced, Wooderson provides a bit of an unknown with the colt breaking his maiden at Saratoga two starts ago then finishing second to the year-older Weather Wiz in an allowance next out. He has never tried stakes company before and the step up here may be more difficult than the older horses he faced in Saratoga with two Kentucky Derby contenders in the field. However, a graded stakes victory would look good on his stallion resume and if there are two things Pletcher knows how to do it’s getting a horse ready to win a targeted race and the best way to develop a stallion prospect.
Steve Asmussen sends out four horses in the Derby including Grade 3 Super Derby winner Limation who beat Lone Sailor last out but an even more interesting entry from the barn is Combatant. Second in the Remington Springboard Mile Stakes here last year, Combatant was on the Kentucky Derby trail this year. His results on the trail earned him a spot in the Kentucky Derby and he finished 18th in the race before finishing fifth in the Grade 3 Matt Winn Stakes a month later.
The most interesting thing about Combatant is that even though he’d done fairly well on the dirt, placing in four stakes races his connections opted for turf after the Matt Winn. The colt didn’t disgrace himself on the turf when running his fastest Equibase Speed Figure to date on the surface at Saratoga but after two off-the-board finishes he’s back on dirt here. A placing on this track already and running again horses on the Derby trail and at Saratoga should give bettors some confidence here but this race definitely isn’t a walk in the park.
The horse with the best credentials in this race is almost certainly the Tom Amoss-trained Lone Sailor.
Lone Sailor misses by a nose to Core Beliefs in the Grade 3 Ohio Derby, run at the same nine-furlong distance as the Oklahoma Derby. (Video: JACK Thistledown YouTube channel)
Admittedly, he does have two strikes against him with no wins this year and the 5 ¾ length trouncing Limation gave him in the Grade 3 Super Derby. But for the most part Lone Sailor has been consistent. He’s spent the last year butting heads with some of the best 3-year-olds in this class and was third two starts ago to champion Good Magic.
The worrisome thing about Lone Sailor that the Majestic Warrior son doesn’t seem to love to win but perhaps a drop in class here will help him. Even if he doesn’t get to the winner’s circle, it’s hard to see him finishing off the board.
A sleeper in this field may be the extremely lightly raced First Mondays, who has only made three starts in his career. Debuting in late June, the Curlin colt won his first two starts before finishing third in the Grade 3 Smarty Jones at Parx. Diamond King, the second place finisher in that race is also running here, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see First Mondays make a big leap from his first stakes start to his second. No matter how he runs here, the best to come from him will probably be next year.
First post for the 12 race card is at 3:06 p.m. central time with the Oklahoma Derby scheduled to go off as the second to last race at 8:06 p.m., one race after the recently upgraded Grade 3 Remington Park Oaks.
