A single Oaklawn victory put Chasing Time on equal terms, in one sense, with a two-time meet winner coming off a stakes triumph.
Chasing Time's 7 3/4-length triumph Friday elevated the Not This Time 3-year-old into Pool 2 of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager, which runs 11 a.m. Friday through 5 p.m. Sunday. It also sent about 55 of Chasing Time's 3,220 owners in the My Racehorse partnership, some Arkansans included, to the Oaklawn winner's circle, Abbey Huffman, the stable's Midwest racing manager, estimated.
My Racehorse campaigned two-time champion racemare Monomoy Girl, whose last victory came in Oaklawn's Grade 3 Bayakoa last February. The stable also raced 2020 Horse of the Year Authentic in partnership with Spendthrift Farm of the late Bradley Wayne Hughes. (Standing for $75,000 in Kentucky, Authentic on Sunday sired his first reported foal, a colt produced by the Old Fashioned mare Streak of Luck, a stakes winner and multiple graded-placed earner of $352,109).
Chasing Time also represented the first victory for jockey Joel Rosario since he suffered a hairline fracture of a rib when unseated shortly after a Dec. 2 race at Aqueduct. On his 37th birthday, he resumed riding during an expected Oaklawn stay through early April. On Saturday, he was named an Eclipse Award finalist as leading jockey after his mounts earned more than $32 million last year.
Chasing Time, getting a mile in 1:38.41 and paying $3, rewarded Steve Asmussen, always on the lookout for a Kentucky Derby prospect after going 0-for-23 in the Churchill Downs classic. Chasing Time broke his maiden at Churchill Downs on his third attempt and a distant second in an Oaklawn allowance-optional claimer Dec. 17. Friday's race marked his first around two turns.
Rosario won the 2013 Derby with Orb for Shug McGaughey and captured last year's Grade 2 Rebel at Oaklawn with Concert Tour and the 2020 Grade 1 Arkansas Derby and Rebel with Nadal for Bob Baffert.
"Me, I was excited after the race and then to see so many people in there cheering -- it was very emotional for me and very good to see that," Rosario said. "It was unbelievable, and that's what I do every day."
With his victory Friday, Chasing Time joins two-time meet winner Dash Attack in KDFW Pool 2. Both are 20-1 with Dash Attack, the Jan. 1 Smarty Jones winner, among four Ken McPeek horses listed including Grade 1 winner Rattle N Roll (30-1). Grade 2 winner Smile Happy (8-1), the Kentucky Jockey Club winner last time out, is the favorite among 23 individual entrants in Pool 2 with all other 3-year-olds, listed No. 24, the overall 7-5 choice.
Asmussen also is represented by Fair Grounds stakes winner Epicenter.
Oaklawn's next Kentucky Derby post race is the Grade 3 $750,000 Southwest Jan. 29 with 17 qualifying points (10-4-2-1) for the May 7 classic.
Claim to fame: Special Reserve, a two-time graded stakes winner after being claimed for $40,000 at Oaklawn, has been named the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association Claiming Horse of the Year. The Midshipman horse won the Grade 2 Phoenix at Keeneland and subsequently placed fourth in the Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Sprint at Del Mar. Earlier, he won the Maryland Sprint at Pimlico and the Iowa Sprint at Prairie Meadows and finished second, ahead of champion Whitmore, in the Grade 1 Vanderbilt Handicap at Saratoga.
Claimed off Randy Morse after a Feb. 6 Oaklawn victory, Special Reserve won his first race for Mike Maker March 13 in Hot Springs. He then finished second in Keeneland's Grade 3 Commonwealth before taking back-to-back stakes. Maker trains Special Reserve for David Staudacher and the Paradise Farms Corp. of Peter Proscia.
"It's been such a great experience, and he's such a great horse," said Staudacher. "This award means a lot. I've been in the business over 40 years, and I had my first stakes win with Mike four or five years ago. I've been claiming horses a long time -- claimed some good ones, claimed some not-so-good ones. Love the sport, love the people involved. It's just so much fun."
Special Reserve will be honored during HBPA's national convention March 1-4 in Hot Springs. After winning five out of eight races and earning $617,100 last year, he will race as a 6-year-old with a return visit in the Phoenix targeted before the Breeders' Cup at Keeneland.