Cabrera will be mainstay at Will Rogers meet

Will Rogers Downs in Claremore, Okla., opens a 28-date meet Monday with a strong riding colony that includes the comebacking David Cabrera and Belen Quinonez as well as stalwarts Alex Birzer, Curtis Kimes, and Floyd Wethey Jr.

The season will continue through May 15. Will Rogers will race every Monday and Tuesday, select Wednesdays, and on Saturday, May 4, during the simulcast of the Kentucky Derby. First post daily is 1:15 p.m. Central.

Cabrera, who has won riding titles at Lone Star Park, Oaklawn Park, and Remington Park, resumed riding Feb. 17 at Sam Houston after recovering from injuries sustained in September. His first winners back came Feb. 23, when he had a riding double at Sam Houston.

Cabrera is active in the entries Monday and Tuesday at Will Rogers.

“Fortunately, we’ve landed some live mounts for the first week and have very live stakes mounts for the month of March,” said Jose Santos Jr., the agent for Cabrera. “Excited to get started.”

Quinonez is the younger brother of Luis Quinonez, who recently passed a milestone of 5,000 wins. Belen Quinonez’s mounts Monday and Tuesday are his first since the Oaklawn meet in 2017. He had been developing young horses while away from race riding, Luis Quinonez said in December.

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Alex Birzer is moving closer to a career milestone, as a winner of 3,838 Thoroughbred races, according to Daily Racing Form statistics. Kimes and Wethey have long been a leading riders in Oklahoma, while Gerardo Mora on Thursday was sitting at 999 Thoroughbred wins in North America.

Will Rogers puts on an eight-race card Monday, and there are three allowance races. Purses for those races range from $23,000 to $30,000. There is a maiden special weight for Oklahoma-breds, and the purse is $22,000.

Thetruthisthetruth, who was one of the winningest horses in North America in 2023 with nine victories through the year, goes in one of the allowances, the third race. In another allowance, the seventh, Cabrera rides Okie Love.

Will Rogers has seven stakes scheduled, according to a listing on its website. The richest are two new offerings – the $75,000 Welder on March 19 and the $75,000 Blue Ribbon for fillies March 18. They will be carded for 3-year-olds bred in Oklahoma. The races will be run at six furlongs. The Welder is named for the Oklahoma Horse Racing Hall of Fame member who owns multiple horse of the meet titles at his home track of Will Rogers.

The open-company stakes offerings are the $50,000 Wilma Mankiller for fillies and mares April 15 and the $50,000 Highland Ice for 3-year-olds and up April 16. Both races are at six furlongs.

Will Rogers will run all of its stakes on either Monday or Tuesday cards.

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