The Smarty Jones stakes today at Oaklawn Park was a textbook example of why many trainers do not like to ship 3 year olds in January and February. Coastline was favored heavily at 3/2 in the field of 10 horses despite shipping in over the weekend and little time to prepare for the Oaklawn Racing Surface.
The pace was projected to be fast with several recent sprint winners in the field and Coastline drew the outside post and was expected to show speed. Coastline broke well and was 3 wide down the backstretch. Tanzanite Cat broke fast was challenged by Walt at the half mile pole with moderate to slow fractions of 23.17 and 47.37 based on how fast the track was playing today.
Six furlongs into the race, Coastline was asked first with Walt gamely making a break for the wire, Tanzanite tracked him every step and pounced mid-stretch. Coastline ran 3rd the entire race. The pace was moderate early and average late, the speed went like a merry-go round around the track, with no closers making any impact and the three speed horses dominated the race on the front end.
The winner Tanzanite Cat is interesting his sire Graeme Hall stands for $4,000 so paying 150K is pretty outrageous. Debut race was at Delmar with 2nd race a washed off the turf allowance event at the Fairgrounds. This race might have been his big race, can’t see him improving much off this effort and may not get a dream trip again.
Walt ran well as expected, showed some grit and his natural speed will always ensure that he gets a good trip, expect him to move forward off this race.
Coastline will improve off this effort, he shipped in late for the race, had no time to adjust from Gulfstream to Oaklawn Park, drew the outside post position and was rated early while 3 wide. With one month to train over the Oaklawn Park surface and longer distance his natural speed will get him in position. He was not asked late and was clearly tired going into the turn which is a sign of the late shipping and new surface.
The 9th race was a wire to wire job and the first 3 races on the card were wire to wire. Overall this surface is fast for this time of year, the last couple of year’s the Oaklawn Surface they were running 1:14’s in January, the 9th race was run in a sub 1:11. On Sunday Black Bear and Work All Week set pounding fractions and went tooth and nail all the way around and never stopped on a real surface one of them should have stopped. They ran 1:03 and 3/5.