Classic meet kicks off with Speed King in Fifth Season
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Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., returns to action Thursday after a planned break that was extended a week by Winter Storm Fern. Thursday’s overflowing 10-race card matches Grade 3 winners Speed King and Komorebino Omoide in the $150,000 Fifth Season.
The one-mile stakes comes on the first card of the classic meet, which will extend through May 2. Oaklawn wrapped up a holiday meet Jan. 4, and while racing was to have resumed Jan. 30, winter weather dictated a change to the schedule. The Southwest Stakes will be run Friday and a card of racing has been added on Super Bowl Sunday.
Speed King, who won last year’s Southwest Stakes, is moving back to two turns in the Fifth Season, which is for horses 4 and older. He enters off a sharp nonwinners-of-three-lifetime allowance sprint win Dec. 26 at Oaklawn. The effort came in his second start off a layoff.
“We gave him a break,” trainer Ron Moquett said. “After the race in the Arkansas Derby, we decided that we were going kind of do a reset, and the owners were kind enough to let me do what was best for the horse. I thought mentally and physically he was kind of a little needing a break, and it took me a while to get him back where I felt we were going in the right direction and they were patient. I’m just tickled to death that their patience was rewarded.”
Speed King covered six furlongs in a sharp 1:09.45 and popped a Beyer Speed Figure of 93, which equaled the career-high number he earned in the Southwest. He set the pace in the Southwest at 1 1/16 miles and in the recent allowance, and he figures to be prominent Thursday when he breaks from post 9 under Luis Saez.
“I think if anybody wants to go in front of us, they’re going to have to commit to going too fast,” Moquett said. “That’s just how it is. We’re going to let him do what he wants to do and try to go from there.”
The Fifth Season will end at the sixteenth pole, as with all one-mile races at Oaklawn. The middle distance seems like an ideal fit for Speed King.
“We know he has speed and we know that he can carry it,” Moquett said. “It really doesn’t matter if they press him, as long as they use common sense. That’s the main thing. I’m not inviting people to come up there and see how fast we can go, but I just know that if he wants to go to a fight, he likes that. But I don’t think it does him or anybody else any good to go up there and try to outmaneuver each other.”
Komorebino Omoide shortens up some after contesting the pace last out in the Tenacious at 1 1/16 miles at Fair Grounds. He could get an ideal trip just off Speed King. Ramon Vazquez has the mount from post 4.
Others making up the nine-horse field include Pony Express, a Southern California-based runner who was scratched from the Grade 2 San Pasqual on Saturday at Santa Anita; Runaway Again, who won the Prince of Wales last September at Fort Erie; and Will Take It, winner of the Hanshin last June at Churchill Downs.
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