Oaklawn: Glinda the Good tough in Instant Racing
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Glinda the Good’s form is littered with top-class 3-year-old fillies, and it is those company lines that point her out as a leading contender in the $100,000 Instant Racing at Oaklawn Park on Friday.
The Instant Racing, a one-mile race for 3-year-old fillies, drew a full field of 12. It is one of two stakes on the card, the other being the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom Handicap. Both of the races are part of Oaklawn’s annual Racing Festival of the South, when nine stakes are run over the final week of the meet. Purses for the races total $2.8 million, with the series closing Saturday with the running of the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby.
Glinda the Good has spent most of her career lining up against such leading Kentucky Oaks hopefuls as Grace Hall, On Fire Baby, and Princess Arabella. She began hooking such fillies last year at Delaware Park, when she ran second to Grace Hall in the $75,000 Blue Hen on Oct. 1.
Glinda the Good raced next at Churchill Downs in the Grade 2 Pocahontas on Oct. 30, finishing third to On Fire Baby. Glinda the Good’s latest run-in with a top-class filly came last month, when she finished second to Princess Arabella in the $200,000 Sunland Park Oaks.
Glinda the Good has natural speed, and is drawn well in post 5, both assets in the Instant Racing, as the one-mile race will end at the sixteenth pole. Corey Nakatani has the mount for Stonestreet Stable and trainer Steve Asmussen.
Amazing Shoes will be the first starter that trainer Shannon Ritter has for Patricia Blass after Blass late last month ended her business relationship of more than 30 years with trainer Jinks Fires. Others set to start include Livi Makenzie, who was scratched from the Grade 2, $300,000 Fantasy here Wednesday in favor of the Instant Racing.
The field also includes Morrow Cove, a shipper for trainer Todd Pletcher, and Zapper Belle, a daughter of the Grade 1-winning mare Capote Belle who has won back-to-back starts this meet at Oaklawn.