HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Grade 1 winner Nakatomi is the class of the field, logical favorite, and strictly the one to beat in Saturday’s $140,000 Gulfstream Park Sprint. The question is: Will he run?

The Saudi Cup fell apart and a wintry blast moved the Rebel Stakes back a day. This Saturday’s racing does not look like it did a couple weeks ago.

Granted, the matchup between Forever Young and the great Romantic Warrior in the world’s richest race is must-see viewing. But imagine if Sierra Leone, Laurel River, Locked, and White Abarrio showed up, as at one point seemed possible.

We’re left picking through the remains of Saturday’s stakes schedule.

Turf Dash

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Lat Long, who earned one of the highest Beyer Speed Figures on last month’s Southwest Stakes Day card at Oaklawn Park, should start as a strong favorite in the featured ninth race Saturday.

The one-mile allowance is for 4-year-olds and up who have never won two races. It will be run at a mile and has a field of 10.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Now that she has seemingly found her surface, Weigh the Risks will begin to define her class level when she makes her dirt stakes debut in Saturday’s $150,000 Heavenly Prize Invitational at Aqueduct. 

Weigh the Risks did not develop into the kind of turf horse trainer Chad Brown and owner Seth Klarman had hoped, going 1 for 6 over that surface. She had trained well enough on dirt that Brown opted to give her a try on that surface in November and Weigh the Risks responded with a nine-length first-level allowance win that earned a 96 Beyer Speed Figure. 

No Laurel River, winner of the Dubai World Cup and the highest-rated horse in the world last year. No Sierra Leone, Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and champion 3-year-old male last year in America. No White Abarrio, smashing winner of the Pegasus World Cup, and no Locked, the on-the-come 4-year-old second to him in the Pegasus.

All those defections yet the $20 million Saudi Cup, the richest horse race in the world, still packs juice.

It was in Maryland during May of 2023 that it became evident Straight No Chaser had world-class sprint talent. And if Straight No Chaser can win the $1.5 million Riyadh Dirt Sprint on Saturday night in Saudi Arabia, he can reasonably be called the best dirt sprinter in the world.

The South African-bred Isivunguvungu didn’t quite take North America by storm last year, but he made enough of an impression that he bears watching in 2025, a campaign that begins in Saturday’s Turf Dash at Tampa Bay Downs.

Smarty Jones, the popular colt who narrowly missed winning the 2004 Triple Crown, is among the eight racehorses who will appear on the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame’s ballot for 2025, the Hall of Fame announced Thursday.

Smarty Jones, who lost only the Belmont Stakes in his nine-race career, is making his first appearance on the ballot this year, 21 years after his Triple Crown campaign. To be included on the Hall of Fame ballot for contemporary horses, a horse must have been retired for at least five years and been active within the past 25 years.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Bettors cannot get enough of streaking female turf sprinter Queen Maxima, an odds-on winner of recent allowance races and a short price again Saturday in the $100,000 Wishing Well Stakes for fillies and mares at Santa Anita.

With Kentucky continuing to ride out record snowfall and deadly flooding, it sometimes seems as though winter will never end. But horse racing’s ultimate rite of spring, the Kentucky Derby, is just 10 weeks from Saturday, and while the temperature might be below freezing when a big field of 3-year-olds lines up for the $175,000 John Battaglia Memorial on Saturday night at Turfway Park, things are heating up on the local road to the classic.