Oaklawn Park: Always in a Tiz found to have lung infection

Barbara D. Livingston

Always in a Tiz will stay at Oaklawn to train up to the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel on March 16.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Always in a Tiz, who finished fifth as the second choice in the Grade 3, $300,000 Southwest at Oaklawn this past Monday, was found to have a lung infection following the race, according to his connections. The horse came into the Southwest off a fast-closing third in last month’s $150,000 Smarty Jones at Oaklawn.

“He scoped with a lung infection,” said Anthony Bonomo Jr., general manager for MeB Racing Stables and Brooklyn Boyz Stables.

Always in a Tiz invaded from Gulfstream for the Southwest. Bonomo said plans are to keep the horse, who is trained by Dominick Schettino, in town to train up to the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel here March 16.

“We’re going to still shoot for the Rebel,” Bonomo said. “With the points system, we need some big points now. We need to be one-two.”

The Rebel is worth 50 points to the winner on the new Kentucky Derby system governing preference into the May 4 classic.

[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]

Always in a Tiz is a strapping son of Tiznow who in his second career start played runner-up to Vyjack in an overnight stakes at Aqueduct. Following that race, Vyjack won the Grade 2 Jerome. As for Always in a Tiz, he went on to be beaten just a neck in the Smarty Jones, a race that ended at the sixteenth pole at Oaklawn.

Texas Bling will likely make his next start in the Rebel, trainer Danele Durham said. The horse was ninth in the Southwest, one start after finishing second by a neck in the Smarty Jones. Texas Bling was racing on a wet track for the first time in the Southwest.

“He just could not get a hold of the racetrack,” Durham said. “A lot of that has to do with conformation and size.”

Durham said that jockey Cliff Berry told her that the horses’s “hind legs were going everywhere.”

“He certainly was beaten by an excellent horse. It just wasn’t our track that day,” Durham said.