HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The casino players at Oaklawn Park have the perfect hunch bet awaiting them on the racing side of operations Sunday in Gaming, who invades from Southern California for the $200,000 Hot Springs Stakes.
The Grade 1 winner is the class of the field in the one-mile race for 3-year-olds. It shares a card with the $145,000 Southern Hospitality, an overnight stakes for 3-year-old fillies at six furlongs that drew 10. The races continue the Racing Festival of the South, which opened Friday and is a collection of stakes conducted over the final stretch of the Oaklawn meet that runs through May 3.
Gaming is part of a field of eight for the Hot Springs, which will end at the sixteenth pole. Others set to start include Landing Craft, who has stepped up his game with the move to two turns; Clever Again, who earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 87 for a maiden win last out at Oaklawn; and Perfect Force, who has won back-to-back races at the meet for Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas.
Gaming was one of his generation’s top 2-year-olds last season as an Eclipse Award finalist for owners Mike Pegram, Karl Watson, and Paul Weitman, and Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert. He had been on deck for the Virginia Derby earlier this month but instead lands in the Hot Springs.
“We were trying to make the Colonial race, but he spiked just a little temperature and then he was fine a few days later,” Baffert said. “He would have liked that one turn.”
Gaming won last year’s Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity at seven furlongs, and from there was second to eventual champion Citizen Bull in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Nov. 1. Gaming then ran third as the 1-2 favorite in the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity on Dec. 14 and eighth in the Grade 3 Southwest in his most recent start Jan. 25 at Oaklawn.
“Gaming, I’d like to see him return to form,” Baffert said. “He went off form there. His last two runs were dismal. He won the Del Mar Futurity and he ran well in the Breeders’ Cup, and I ran him at Los Al and maybe I should have given him a little more time.”
In the Southwest, Gaming did not break sharply from the rail and shortly afterward was forced to check. In advance of the Hot Springs, he shows some strong works at Santa Anita, among them a bullet half-mile in 46.80 seconds on March 23.
“He’s been training well, he looks healthy,” Baffert said. “We’ll see what happens.”
John Velazquez has the mount from post 7.
Landing Craft was a maiden winner at a mile Jan. 17 at Oaklawn and in his last start was third by a length in a first-level allowance at 1 1/16 miles on March 2. Trainer Ron Moquett noted the first two finishers from the last race, Bestfriend Rocket and First Division, were to have run back Saturday in the Arkansas Derby.
“There was actually a passing thought of maybe the Arkansas Derby with him,” Moquett said of Landing Craft. “But it was the smart thing to do to back up a little bit. I think he deserves the shot in here. After the race, we’ll see where we’re at.
“He’s a cool horse. The best is yet to come on him.”
Landing Craft has set the pace in his three route races and will break from the rail Sunday under jockey Rafael Bejarano. Landing Craft is a son of Arkansas Derby winner Omaha Beach and races for Harry T. Rosenblum.
Clever Again wired maiden special weight winners over 1 1/16 miles last out at Oaklawn, and the Beyer Speed Figure of 87 that he earned is the best last-race number in the Hot Springs.
The win last out came on the undercard of the Rebel, and Clever Again was ridden by Jose Ortiz, who again has the mount Sunday. Steve Asmussen trains the son of American Pharoah and the Group 3-winning mare Flattering.
Perfect Force has won a pair of races at six furlongs and figures to be prominent on the stretch-out to two turns. He will start from post 8 under Nik Juarez.
The Hot Springs goes as the seventh race, and the Southern Hospitality is slotted as the ninth on Sunday.
Asmussen trainee Miss Martini should get good support off her runner-up finish in the Dixie Belle on Feb. 24 at Oaklawn. The winner of that race, G W’s Girl, has won two stakes at the meet and is bound for graded stakes company at Keeneland, according to trainer Greg Compton.
Miss Martini will break from post 7, and Keith James Asmussen has the mount for Jackpot Farm.
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