Kadri brings perfect style to allowance

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Kadri brings an ideal running style into Sunday’s featured ninth race at Oaklawn Park.

The six-furlong allowance is for 3-year-olds and up who have never won two races. The purse is $105,000.

Kadri is part of a field of six that includes the speed horses Fastly, Pirate Rick, and I’m a Special Star. He could sit just off those runners Sunday.

“He’s starting to be able to put himself right in a very good stalking position,” trainer Larry Jones said of the developing Kadri. “To me, that’s the most favorable for horse racing, to kind of sit in the garden seat there and let somebody do all the dirty work early, hopefully softening up. And you don’t have a world of traffic to deal with whenever you start closing. It’s ideal for every horse, but every horse isn’t that way.”

Kadri used those tactics in his last race, when he rallied from just off the pace to finish second by a half-length in an Oaklawn allowance on March 13. For the effort, the son of Grade 2 winner Mark Valeski earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 80.

“It seems like that’s going to be his style,” Jones said. “His dad was that way. I did train Mark Valeski, and he could kind of sit right off them and make a really nice middle move that puts you in contention at the head of the stretch.”

Mark Valeski’s biggest wins came in the Peter Pan at Belmont Park and the Mineshaft at Fair Grounds. He raced for his breeder, Brereton Jones, who also is the breeder and owner of Kadri. The horse will break from post 2 on Sunday under Fernando De La Cruz.

“Kadri reminds me a little of Mark,” Larry Jones said. “Maybe he doesn’t want to run as far as Mark Valeski would run, but he has very much the same type of running style, to put you in the right spot and accelerate.”

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Kadri gave his connections a thrill last September, when he dominated a maiden special weight sprint on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill Downs. The runner-up from that race, Idol, came back to win a maiden special weight one start later and in his most recent out captured the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap. Kadri, meanwhile, was unable to duplicate the performance for a handful of starts, running fifth, seventh, and ninth in his first races against winners. This year, he’s firing again.

“He seems like he’s kind of rounding back into form,” Jones said. “I don’t know what happened. He’d run such a big race on Derby Day, maybe he hit the wall a little bit, a big effort too soon in his career. He appears to be coming back into hand now. I’m very pleased with his last race. He showed a lot of determination. We’re hoping for big things.”

The field also includes Bank, a half-brother to Grade 1 winner Brilliant Speed who is adding blinkers, and Silver Ratio, who makes his first start since last March and his first at Oaklawn after being based at Gulfstream Park.