Headland hopes to maintain winning form in Thursday feature

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Folks usually don’t ask trainer Steve Hobby how he’s doing. Instead, the conversation tends to open with, “How’s Chindi?”

Such is life in the barn that houses the millionaire racehorse turned uber-popular stable pony. And Hobby wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, he’s now happily starting to field questions about another stable resident, Headland.

Headland is a talented sprinter who leads Thursday’s featured eighth race at Oaklawn Park. The conditioned allowance that carries an optional claiming price of $80,000 is for fillies and mares over six furlongs. The field of nine includes stakes winners Bye Bye J, Ring Leader, and She’s All Wolfe, as well as Ain’t No Elmers, the runner-up in last year’s Grade 3 Miss Preakness at Pimlico.

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The Thursday card also drew Snapper Sinclair, who goes in the seventh race. The one-mile allowance that carries an $80,000 claiming option will be his first start since finishing second in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile on Dec. 5 at Aqueduct. Ricardo Santana Jr. has the mount on the $1.4 million earner for Bloom Racing Stable and trainer Steve Asmussen.

Headland should be a strong favorite one race later, off a tour-de-force performance in a Dec. 18 no-conditions allowance at Remington Park. She set a strong pace and roared home by 6 1/4 lengths. Headland covered six furlongs in 1:09.98, and for the effort earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 97.

“She really stepped up,” said Hobby, who trains Headland for the HWL Partnership. “She had a heck of a kick at the end of that race.”

Headland now returns to Oaklawn, where she has won four races and finished third in three others from seven starts in Hot Springs. The daughter of Paynter has been working right along for the launch of her 5-year-old season Thursday.

“She’s a sweetheart,” Hobby said. “She’s very easy to train, very easy to be around. And she shows up almost every time.”

Headland will break from post 5 in the field of nine and will be ridden by David Cabrera.

“Obviously, if you let her alone on the lead, she’s very tough,” Hobby said. “She can sit off of it. She likes to be forward. She doesn’t have to have the front.”

Ain’t No Elmers draws post 6 after breaking from the rail in each of her last two starts, a runner-up finish in the Miss Preakness in October at Pimlico and a sixth-place finish in the Fort Springs in November at Keeneland.

“We freshened her a little bit,” trainer Bret Calhoun said. “We’re looking forward to this allowance race and moving her back into stakes.”

Calhoun said the hope is to see Ain’t No Elmers advance to the $200,000 Spring Fever on Feb. 27 at Oaklawn.

David Cohen has the mount for John Kerber, Iveta Kerber, and Jon Lapczenski.