Oaklawn Park: Interest Free continues to make progress

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Interest Free has shown talent from the start, but she seemed to step up her game last month, when she moved to two turns. She won an optional claiming route with a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 96, and will be out to build on the effort Thursday at Oaklawn Park.

Interest Free is one of nine fillies and mares in the eighth race, an optional $50,000 claimer at 1 1/16 miles that carries three-other-than allowance conditions. It could produce starters for next month’s Grade 1, $600,000 Apple Blossom Handicap. The field of 4-year-olds and up includes Sisterly Love, a two-time stakes winner who was fourth in last fall’s Grade 1 Spinster; Imposing Grace, a Grade 3 winner invading for trainer Wayne Catalano; and Gold Medal Dancer, who was second in the inaugural $300,360 Zia Park Oaks in November.

Interest Free ships in from Fair Grounds. She will be trainer Neil Howard’s first starter at the Oaklawn meet, and he said the timing of Thursday’s race works well for the filly, a 4-year-old by Exchange Rate. Interest Free last raced on Feb. 2, and stalked and pounced for a half-length win in an optional $40,000 claiming race in her two-turn debut. The win came at 1 1/16 miles at Fair Grounds.

“She seemed really in a comfort zone in her last race, settled in nice,” Howard said. “I thought what we saw the other day was indicative of the fact that two turns is probably going to be her future.”

Interest Free has three wins from six career starts, with her other victories coming in a maiden special weight at Fair Grounds in her debut in March 2013, and an allowance at Churchill Downs last May 18. She is out of the Grade 2-winning mare Seafree. Given her form, Interest Free appears on the cusp of a stakes start.

“We wanted to get another allowance race into her, just to kind of give us some direction, hopefully,” said Howard, who trains Interest Free for W.S. Farish. “The filly has been progressing nicely. We saw the opportunity to run in an allowance race, and we decided to go ahead and latch on to that option.

“The timing was good for us. It’s nice spacing from her last race. In my opinion, sometimes with fillies a little more time between races usually helps. The next time she runs it will be somewhere up there in Kentucky.”

Israel Ocampo has the mount from post 2.

“I think she showed in her last race that her best race, whether sprinting or stretching out now, is settling off the pace a little bit,” Howard said.

Sisterly Love could set the pace from her rail post. Norberto Arroyo Jr. has the mount for trainer Mark Casse.