Competitive fields for Friday Iowa Festival of Racing stakes

Entries are drawn and post positions assigned for the reconfigured Iowa Festival of Racing at Prairie Meadows, which has been compressed to two days and mainly is concentrated on Friday night’s card this year.

The Friday card, first post 6:00 Central, includes four stakes, races 5 through 8, worth a total of $750,000. The $100,000 Iowa Sprint starts the sequence and is followed by the Grade 3, $200,000 Iowa Oaks, the $250,000 Iowa Derby, and the Grade 3, $300,000 Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap. The Sprint and the Oaks drew seven entrants, but the derby has 12 and the Cornhusker 11, both races competitive and playable.

The 1 1/8-mile Cornhusker is so evenly matched that the spread in the assigned weights is only five pounds, 114 to 119, and no one will be running scared from the 119-pound highweight Sir Anthony. Sir Anthony, based at Arlington with trainer Tony Mitchell, won the Grade 3 Harlan’s Holiday this past winter but most recently was fourth going a one-turn Polytrack mile at Arlington.

Remembering Rita upset the 2018 Cornhusker at odds just short of 20-1 and carries 118 pounds after finishing second by a neck in a local allowance prep for Friday’s start. The horse that beat him, Chris And Dave, also is part of the Cornhusker field but neither horse figures among the favorites. The shorter prices are likely to be Exulting and Exclamation Point, one-two in the $250,000 Oaklawn Mile on May 3, and California shippers Dark Vader and Two Thirty Five.

The 1 1/16-mile derby has a bevy of options, including the Brad Cox-trained Night Ops, who was second by a neck to Laughing Fox in the $300,000 Oaklawn Park Invitational, his only stakes start. Visitant, in from California after a solid third-place finish in the Grade 3 Affirmed, also will vie for favoritism.

Lady Apple, trained by Steve Asmussen, heads the Oaks and is likely to be a defined favorite over the Cox-trained Ulele. Lady Apple is coming off a win in the Fantasy Stakes at Oaklawn and a third-place finish in the Kentucky Oaks. Ulele most recently was second by a half-length in the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico.