Heavy Roller likely to start in Essex Handicap next

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Heavy Roller has put himself in the running for a stakes start after he defeated three Grade 3 winners in the Sunday allowance feature at Oaklawn. Heavy Roller closed from next to last in the slop and endless rain and won off by seven lengths at 12-1.

Heavy Roller earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 99 in the mile race.

“He’s a horse that’s been steadily improving, but I’m not going to lie, when I looked at the race, we were pretty intimidated by the competition,” trainer Joe Sharp said Monday. “Having said that, we were confident in our horse, how he’d been training. I had worked him myself over that track and he handled it very well. Obviously, nothing could prepare us for the surface we ran on yesterday.

“We’re pretty excited about what the next step might be.”

Sharp said Heavy Roller is now a candidate for the $300,000 Essex Handicap on March 16 at Oaklawn. Owned by Carl Moore, Heavy Roller was making his first start in Hot Springs on Sunday.

“Seeing that he does like Oaklawn, that’s one thing to our advantage,” Sharp said. “And it’s good, timing-wise.”

Heavy Roller won his second straight race following an optional $40,000 claiming route Jan. 12 at Fair Grounds, for which he earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 90.

Sharp, who has a 20-horse division at Oaklawn, said it’s the first time he’s been stabled at the track in three or four years. In that time his stable has grown. Sharp said the added division enables him to separate horses that have similar conditions and that the purse structure was another reason to set up shop at Oaklawn.

On Saturday, Sharp will run Lady T N T in the $100,000 Dixie Belle, a six-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies.