The twice-delayed Southwest Stakes keeps two members of the original cast, adding one and losing one.
Saturday's Grade 3 Kentucky Derby prep at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort looms as a showdown of Grade 1 winners Essential Quality, the unbeaten juvenile champion of last year, and once-beaten Jackie's Warrior. But the winter storm of last week, which caused the track to lose eight racing days and complicated training, prompted one contending trainer to keep his horse in the barn. Meanwhile, in California, a frequent Oaklawn visitor looked this way once the weather cleared.
Keepmeinmind, a last-out Grade 2 winner, will miss the Southwest, trainer Robertino Diodoro notified the racing office Tuesday, citing the colt's inability to get on the track during the winter storm. The track was closed for training from Feb. 11, the last day of live racing, until Tuesday. The meet resumes Thursday with a nine-race card.
Diodoro plans, he said, to enter his late-running horse in Oaklawn's Grade 2 $1 million Rebel March 13. Both Oaklawn races are 1 1/16 miles but with the Rebel worth 50-20-10-5 in Derby qualifying points to the Southwest's 10-4-2-1. The Rebel would be Keepmeinmind's first start as a 3-year-old and since winning the Kentucky Jockey Cup at Churchill Downs.
A prominent new shooter in the Southwest is Spielberg, a graded-stakes winner in California for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert. Bearing the name of the Oscar-winning director of "Jaws" and "Schindler's List," Spielberg is a Union Rags colt with multiple Grade 1 placings before winning the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity in December. In his first start at 3, he ran fourth in the Grade 3 Robert E. Lewis Jan. 30 at Santa Anita, a 1 1/16-mile Derby prep won by Baffert trainee Medina Spirit.
Essential Quality, trained by Brad Cox, and Jackie's Warrior make yearly debuts in the Southwest. Essential Quality is second in Derby qualifying with 32 points from Grade 1 scores in the Breeders' Futurity and Breeders' Cup Classic, both at Keeneland. Jackie's Warrior is ninth with 12 points, winning two Grade 1 races in New York before running fourth in the Classic. (Keepmeinmind is fifth with 18 points.)
Steve Asmussen, Hall of Fame trainer of Jackie's Warrior, also entered last-out Oaklawn winner Saffa's Day in the Southwest. Also going are Oaklawn-raced Woodhouse (trainer C.R. Trout), Arkansas-owned Last Samurai (Dallas Stewart) and Santa Cruiser (Keith Desormeaux).
Set for 4:58 p.m. and carded as race 10. the Southwest anchors an 11-race card starting at 12:15 p.m. The Grade 3 $600,000 Razorback Handicap for older horses is race 7 (3:20 p.m.). followed by the $200,000 Spring Fever for older filly-and-mare sprinters (3:52 p.m.)