Bob Baffert's home away from home turned into Bates Motel.
Both divisions of the 71st Rebel Stakes contained Hitchcockian suspense but offered twist endings for the trainer who has won the Oaklawn Park race six times.
However improbable, both Improbable and champion Game Winner came away losers for the first time Saturday.
Improbable lost by a neck to Long Range Toddy, a 3-year-old with a liking for Oaklawn but previously second and third over the track. Jon Court rode his second Rebel winner for Willis Horton, a Marshall horseman whose Will Take Charge won the 2013 edition and a bunch of other races in a championship season for Hall of Fame trainer Wayne Lukas.
"We've always had good success with Jon," said Horton, whose horses now are with Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen.
Long Range Toddy, fourth at the head of the stretch, clipped the fast-rated mile and sixteenth in 1:42.49 and paid $18.80 to win.
Omaha Beach represented the first Rebel winner for Rick Porter, a retired automobile dealer from Wilmington, Del., who notched consecutive seconds in the Kentucky Derby with Hard Spun and the ill-fated filly Eight Belles, both trained by Larry Jones. Branching out to the West Coast, winning championships with the brilliant filly Songbird, trained by Jerry Hollendofrer, Porter now has Derby fever with a colt trained by another Hall of Famer, Richard Mandella.
Omaha Beach, dueling for the lead early and two in front when they turned for home, held off Game Winner from outside in a photo finish. Before an estimated 45,500 in the early evening of a sun-splashed day, Omaha Beach ran the faster Rebel (1:42.42) by .07 and paid $10.80 to win.
Omaha Beach has won back-to-back races after losing four straight. By War Front, he's a half-brother to $1.6 million earner Take Charge Brandi, Horton's second champion with Lukas.
"Coming out of a maiden race, it's a big step up," Mandella said. "We always thought he was a really good horse. Being a War Front, I thought maybe he was going to want turf. But I was wrong with that. He wants dirt."
Omaha Beach, along with the Baffert pair and others, arrived in town last week after racing in California was curtailed with the closing of Santa Anita. Oaklawn split the Rebel for the first time, making each leg worth $750,000, which tipped the hands of Mandella, Baffert and other trainers based in California. Game Winner and Improbable, in fact, went in separate divisions of the Rebel after their head-to-head meeting in the Grade 2 San Felipe the previous Saturday was scrapped.
Many expected a Baffert sweep in the richer, redesigned Rebel. Instead, with Dessman a troubled fifth in an entry-level allowance, the white-haired trainer went 0 for 3 (longtime Baffert aide Jimmy Barnes represented his boss, who seldom ventures outside California because of health concerns).
"Game Winner ran really good," Mandella said. "He hadn't run in a long time (since November). He'll probably be tough next time ... but mine just broke his maiden. He might be tougher, too."
The fallout of Baffert's twin defeats will be felt across the racing industry in coming days. Whether the Rebel cast returns intact or in part, or new shooters arrive, for the Grade 1 $1 million Arkansas Derby April 13 will be watched closely.
As for this Rebel Saturday, two horses making late starts on the road to the Kentucky Derby weren't prompt at the finish. Too bad Alfred Hitchcock wasn't around to capture it on film.
Sports on 03/17/2019