Exclamation Point set for stakes debut in Oaklawn Mile

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The time has come.

Exclamation Point will make his long-awaited stakes debut Friday in the $250,000 Oaklawn Mile.

It’s fitting that it comes at Oaklawn Park. It was here a year ago that Exclamation Point won the first two starts of his career to much fanfare as a half-brother to champion Classic Empire, who in 2017 had won the Arkansas Derby.

Fast forward to Friday, and Exclamation Point will start as one of the top choices in the inaugural Oaklawn Mile for 4-year-olds and up – a race complementing the new dates structure that extends the meet to Saturday.

The Oaklawn Mile, which will end at the sixteenth pole, has drawn 11, including stakes winners Fight On, Exulting, Snapper Sinclair, Colonelsdarktemper, Malibu Max, Pioneer Spirit, and Matrooh.

Oaklawn Mile (Race 9)

TOP CONTENDERS

Exclamation Point, by Concord Point
Last 3 Beyers: 91-93-82

◗ He enters the Oaklawn Mile with a 5-for-6 record. Exclamation Point won all three of his races last year at 3, and after starting his 4-year-old season with a fourth-place finish in a Feb. 10 allowance in the slop at Oaklawn, he won back-to-back allowances in March and April. It’s the right time to move into stakes competition, said trainer Brad Cox.

“He’s a horse that I felt all year was behind some of these older horses because he lacked seasoning, having only raced three times,” Cox said of heading into 2019. “He’s got the experience now. He’s got three more races under his belt.

“The first one was a rough race. He probably needed that. He showed us something that day. He got something out of that race at the beginning of the meet with running in the slop, being bounced into the first turn, passing horses at the end. And he showed that he is a fighter, that he’s willing to go on. His two races since have been phenomenal, at Fair Grounds and Oaklawn. He’s just a winner. I mean, he likes to win. He really digs in, and we’re hoping he’s going to be competitive in graded stakes moving forward this year.”

◗ Exclamation Point will break from post 6 under Kentucky Derby-winning rider Stewart Elliott, who has the mount for the partnership of Steven and Brandi Nicholson and Flurry Racing Stable.

Pioneer Spirit, by Malibu Moon
Last 3 Beyers: 97-89-87

◗ He’s shortening up in distance after setting the pace over 1 1/8 miles last out in the Grade 2, $750,000 Oaklawn Handicap, in which he finished third by a half-length. He earned what ranks as this field’s best last-race Beyer Speed Figure, a 97.

◗ Last summer, Pioneer Spirit won the $100,000 Michael G. Schaefer Memorial at Indiana Grand at a distance similar to the Oaklawn Mile’s.