HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – For the second year in a row, a reigning Horse of the Year will launch their season at Oaklawn Park. Last meet, Thorpedo Anna captured the Grade 2 Azeri in her first start since being named the 2024 Horse of the Year. This Saturday, Sovereignty, the 2025 Horse of the Year, is set to make his first start at 4 in the Grade 2, $1.25 million Oaklawn Handicap. It’s a big responsibility to bring out a Horse of the Year for a new season. And it’s one Sovereignty’s trainer, Hall of Fame horseman Bill Mott, did with success the one other time he was in this position. It was in 1996, when Cigar won his seasonal debut in the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park. The February race was his first start since he had captured the Breeders’ Cup Classic at the end of October. The circumstances are different with Sovereignty, the Godolphin homebred who missed the Breeders’ Cup because of a fever. The Oaklawn Handicap will be his first start since August, when he won the Travers at Saratoga. “It’s a little tricky,” Mott said. “Our main focus is the end of the year, but we’ve got to get started. We haven’t run since August, so we need to get started, and we realize we’ve been away a long time. And we realize the vulnerability of any horse that’s been away that long. So, you know, sometimes they need a race to really get a race under their belt to get started. :: Live racing action at Oaklawn Park! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. “And this is not going to be any race. Of course, Journalism is going to show up, and White Abarrio. One’s a classic winner, a Preakness winner, and one’s a Breeders’ Cup Classic winner. So, they’re horses that can run, for sure.” Sovereignty won the Kentucky Derby over runner-up Journalism, who came back and captured the Preakness. Sovereignty’s camp awaited the Belmont Stakes and won the race over second-place finisher Journalism. The pair had been set to meet in the Breeders’ Cup, but the matchup has had to wait for Saturday. “He came up with a fever,” Mott said of Sovereignty. “I guess it was the day we breezed him. He wound up having a fever that afternoon. From there, he had time off. We sent him to Kentucky after the Breeders’ Cup, and he was there for nearly 60 days. They put him in light training there for a while, then he came back to us.” Sovereignty has had all eight of his published works for his return at the Payson Park Thoroughbred Training Center in Indiantown, Fla. “It’s a fairly deep, sandy racetrack,” Mott said. He has been pleased with Sovereignty’s training leading into the Oaklawn Handicap. “He’s willing,” he said. “He does enough galloping. He does what we ask him to do, or what he wants to do. As far as works, he kind of only does what he wants to do, what his company does. If you want a real solid work, ordinarily, you kind of have to have him in company and he’ll do whatever the other horse does. And he does enough, but he’s never been one of those horses that is going to break the stopwatch.” Sovereignty saves it for race day, and Mott hopes that will again be the case Saturday. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.