Miss Code West and jockey Floyd Wethey Jr. will be seeking their ninth stakes win together in Friday night’s $50,000 Bob Barry Memorial at Remington Park.
The 7 1/2-furlong race for fillies and mares is one of three turf stakes on the card. Tap the Dot will seek his third consecutive win in the $50,000 Red Earth, and then there’s the $50,000 Cliff Berry Turf Sprint. The races are for Oklahoma-breds and serve as stepping-stones to Oklahoma Classics Night.
Wethey has ridden Miss Code West throughout her career for owners Jeffry and Julie Puryear and trainer Kevin Scholl. She has won the last two horse of the meet titles at Remington and, overall, the 4-year-old is 10 for 14 for earnings of $474,717.
The Bob Barry drew a field of six runners, including multiple stakes winner Take Me Serious and defending winner Doudoudouwanadance.
The race is a rare turf appearance for Miss Code West. She is a winner on turf from two starts, with her victory coming June 28 in the $100,000 Chicken Fried Stakes at five furlongs at Lone Star Park. She will be moving back to two turns off a runner-up finish in an Aug. 16 allowance at Remington.
“For the longest time, I always thought her best distance was probably farther, but then she jumped up and won that five-eighths race on the grass at Lone Star,” Wethey said. “She’s just good at about anything she does, but I think going seven and a half, I think she’ll love it. The two turns, love it. The grass, if she handles it any of the way she did over there in Dallas, we’ll be fine.
Miss Code West and Wethey will start from post 5.
“I’m hoping we leave there a little more aggressively this time,” Wethey said. “I kind of let her tell me where she wants to be. I don’t argue with her a whole lot. I just try to stay out of her way and let her do her thing, and maybe that’s why we get along. I just don’t want to get in her way. I let her run her race, and she generally tells me when she wants to go and I let her do it.
“She’s got a big, long stride to her and she’s got a really high cruising speed, too. She can go pretty quick and it doesn’t bother her. And she always shows heart late if there’s something around her.”
Miss Code West and Wethey formed a bond a few years ago, ahead of her winning her career debut in a maiden special weight sprint on Oct. 5, 2023, at Remington.
“I remember when Kevin first called me to get on her and I went into the stall. She was big, and I said, ‘Kevin, I hope she’s nice,’ ” Wethey recalled. “I’ll never forget that. And he looked at me and laughed and we just hit it off from there. She is nice, but when it gets race time, she’s a bit on the ornery side.”
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Out on the track, Miss Code West made an immediate impression on Wethey.
“I got on her several times before she ran her first out,” he said. “I told Kevin, ‘Oh, man, she just does everything like you want her to do it.’ She’s just an old soul, the way she carries herself. The first time I got on her, she didn’t feel like a young horse. She felt like an older horse, just always took everything. And you could tell going out there, she just loved to run and loved competition. She loves being in front of them and not letting them by her.”
Miss Code West has been a flagship mount for Wethey, a 35-year-old native of Miami, Oklahoma. His father, Floyd Wethey Sr., and his uncle Luke Wethey both were jockeys.
“The first racehorse I got on, I think I was 9,” Floyd Wethey Jr. said. “And that was just one here and there. I started getting on them pretty heavy when I was probably 11, 12 years old. We had some really well-broke horses that I could handle. My dad, he’d pony me around there when I got on them and galloped them. It was a pretty early start.”
Wethey won his first race in Eureka, Kan., on May 26, 2007, and has become a mainstay in Oklahoma and Texas. The last three years have been his best, and the winner of more than 1,600 races has had a particularly good run of stakes success during that period with horses like Miss Code West, Ghost Hero, Flat Hanby, Palacein, Mor Force, Paluxy, and Perfect Wish.
“After doing this so many years, people get to where they trust you more, handling certain horses in certain spots,” Wethey said. “The good Lord just blessed me with good people to work with, honestly.”
And horses like Miss Code West.
“I guess we just fit each other,” Wethey said.
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