Warrior's Club gets season started in allowance

A trio of horses who last raced in Breeders’ Cup races will start their seasons Sunday at Oaklawn Park.

Warrior’s Club goes in the eighth race, an allowance at a mile in which he faces fellow Grade 3 winners Shotgun Kowboy and One Liner. Warrior’s Club was eighth in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, won by Roy H, who has since captured the Grade 2 Palos Verdes at Santa Anita with a Beyer Speed Figure of 109.

Jon Court has the mount on Warrior’s Club from post 6.

“There were two options,” trainer D. Wayne Lukas said of return spots. “One was six [furlongs], and the other one was a mile and here. I just thought that on a comeback race, he might not be sharp enough to stay in touch with the field going six. I decided to take a mile. Again, it’s a comeback race. I think he’ll run well.”

The six-furlong spot that ended up going Saturday drew a host of stakes winners, including the quick Mitole.

Lukas said the first stakes objective for Warrior’s Club this season is the Grade 3, $250,000 Commonwealth, a seven-furlong race at Keeneland on April 6. Warrior’s Club won the race in 2018 for the Churchill Downs Racing Club.

“The club management wanted to have a real strong spring because that’s where all the club members are,” Lukas said of Kentucky. “They didn’t want me to run him a lot this winter, when nobody was here to enjoy the event, so I didn’t. I just kept him in a holding pattern, and then we’ll kick it up now.”

Earlier on Sunday’s card, Mia Mischief and Kirby’s Penny, who exit the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, meet in the sixth race, an optional $62,500 claiming race for fillies and mares at six furlongs. Mia Mischief, a Grade 2 winner who was ninth in the Breeders’ Cup, will break from the rail, and Kirby’s Penny, a Grade 3 winner who was 13th, drew post 5.

The Nov. 3 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Churchill was won by Shamrock Rose, who was voted the 2018 female sprint champion. There have been three next-out winners from the race, including Marley’s Freedom, the fourth-place finisher who came back to win the Grade 3 Go For Wand at Aqueduct.