Skelly has sights on third straight Count Fleet Sprint Handicap score

Skelly could bid for an unprecedented third consecutive win in the Grade 3, $500,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap later this season at Oaklawn Park.

The champion Whitmore won three runnings of the race – in 2017, 2018, and 2020 – and holds the record for most victories in the Count Fleet. The meet’s premier race for sprinters was first held in 1974.

Skelly has been the dominant sprinter at Oaklawn the past two seasons, with five stakes wins in Arkansas for Red Lane Thoroughbreds and trainer Steve Asmussen. A winner of 10 of 19 starts overall, he last raced Nov. 2, finishing an uncharacteristic 10th in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

“Skelly got a little break after the Breeders’ Cup, but he ought to make the end of Oaklawn,” Asmussen said.

The earner of $1.7 million could make the Count Fleet, a six-furlong race to be run April 13.

“We’re hoping to,” Asmussen said.

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The other Oaklawn stakes Skelly has won each of the last two years is the $200,000 Lake Hamilton, which will be run May 2. His other Oaklawn stakes win came in the King Cotton in February. The Beyer Speed Figure of 105 that he earned still ranks as this year’s co-second-highest Beyer for races up to a mile, according Daily Racing Form statistics.

Asmussen’s group of notable sprinters include Jaxon Traveler, the millionaire who won his third straight race in last month’s Zia Park Sprint. He covered six furlongs in a blazing 1:07.79, one start after winning the David M. Vance at his fall base of Remington Park.

“Most likely, he’ll go back to Oaklawn, where he won the Whitmore last season,” Asmussen said.

The Grade 3, $250,000 Whitmore will be renewed March 15.

Jaxon Traveler is 12 for 34 for West Point Thoroughbreds.

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