Perusing racing news often feels like mere doomscrolling, but peel back that tissue of trouble and the best horses, the heart of the sport, have a very strong pulse. The Oaklawn Handicap was awesome, and Sovereignty, defeated, remains a fearsome beast. Burnham Square seemed like a serious grass horse winning the Elkhorn. Gezora makes her 2026 debut next week. This looks like the best Derby in a long time. The Oaks has heft. Lots to look forward to, even if this Saturday’s stakes action came up light. Royal Heroine First pass through the race and I doubted Grand Slam Smile could be favored, but upon closer scrutiny, maybe she really is. No one else has recently run as fast, and Grand Slam Smile has been winning a lot – three out of her last four and five out of her last eight since returning from a layoff in a new barn last June. But four of those five victories came in sprints, and in her two-turn mile win, she held on by a half-length facing California-breds. Grand Slam Smile races competitively in two-turn open stakes but lacks the stamina and quality to make her worth a play at something like the 5-2 morning-line odds. :: Santa Anita Classic Meet! Get DRF Past Performances, Clocker Reports, and more. Let’s see if Tirupati can do some good at a better price. The case for her is far from airtight and rests almost entirely on the six-race span – one start in late 2024, the rest in 2025 – after trainer Jonathan Thomas and George Strawbridge’s Augustin Stables claimed her for $50,000. An Augustin claim? Rare, indeed. Strawbridge races homebreds. A good claim, though, because Tirupati became a graded stakes winner last summer in the Grade 3 Wilshire, which came four weeks after an equally strong second in the Grade 2 Buena Vista. Both performances would win this race, but can Tirupati get there? She’d lost her edge when seventh in the 2025 Royal Heroine, then didn’t race for nearly a year before Thomas brought her back April 4 in the Monrovia. Tirupati’s no sprinter, the race was merely a stepping-stone toward this start, and I’d say she less “weakened,” as the chart describes, than “went evenly” to the wire. Her April 18 work suggests she can step forward sufficiently to win this race. Tirupati, breezing solo, picked up unexpected company, a Mark Glatt-trained duo who had started rolling as Tirupati just was getting into her drill and came into the homestretch many lengths ahead of Tirupati. One of the two, Lonesome Stew, on March 30 won the Sensational Star with a 94 Beyer Speed Figure, and Tirupati from the three-sixteenths to the finish closed fast on both Glatt horses, whipping up the rail and past Lonesome Stew going into the clubhouse turn. It looked like a very good drill and made Tirupati look like the horse she was 13 months ago. Woodhaven Going back through all the breeze video you can find for a horse like once-started Instability can be instructive: You see the progression into his debut and development out of it. The colt works well on dirt for a grass horse, has gotten stronger and more focused in his breezes throughout the winter and into the spring. He might not quite have been ready for the tough older horse Risk Tolerance when they went together March 27, but Instability came back with good-looking drills against fellow 3-year-old Arizona Territory. :: Get DRF Kentucky Oaks & Derby Betting Strategies by Marcus Hersh and David Aragona. Full analysis and wager recommendations! His lone start, a maiden turf route March 6 at Tampa, definitely caught the eye. Runner-up Democracy Defender keeps getting bad trips but looks like an above average talent, and he was nowhere near Instability’s class. I fit that race into the whole of his work pattern and see a colt trainer Chad Brown might have pointed to this race all year. He is almost certainly going to improve Saturday, even if it happens at a slightly deflated price with Blinging It Back coming out of the race. Roxelana Here’s hoping the blah showing two races back and the dud last out at least slightly pump up One Magic Philly’s price, because she’s running back to her better races from the look of two recent Churchill works, both with blinkers back on. Connections have treated the mare as a horse who wants seven furlongs to a mile, but while she’s raced effectively in that range, I like her cutting back to six furlongs. Her price comes down with Lotsandlotsofcandy coming out of the Roxelana but still ought to be reasonable. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.