Some of the winter season’s best dirt racing is coming to the Midwest with the opening of the Oaklawn Park 2024-’25 meet on Friday, Dec. 6. Racing at Oaklawn boasts big fields, good betting races for handicappers, an excellent stakes program, and very strong purses throughout its five-month season that will extend until Kentucky Derby day, May 3.

The Hot Springs, Ark. track will offer daily purses averaging $900,000 and racing will be conducted mostly on a three-days-a-week basis plus holidays. The most high-profile part of the Oaklawn season will be the track’s extensive stakes schedule encompassing 47 stakes races with purses totaling $16.2 million. The headline event of the meet will be the $1.5 million, Grade 1 Arkansas Derby on March 29. Other stakes races for Kentucky Derby hopefuls will also have seven-figure purses including the Grade 3, $1 million Southwest Stakes on Jan. 25 and the Grade 2, $1.25 million Rebel Stakes on Feb. 22. Oaklawn also will offer two more races worth $1.25 million apiece – the Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap for fillies and mares on April 12 and the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap on April 19.

Get to Know Oaklawn Park

Oaklawn Park is a much-anticipated meet for bettors. (Eclipse Sportswire)

For horseplayers, the Oaklawn Park meet is much more about its excellent day-to-day handicapping offerings than it is about stakes races. The dirt racing contested throughout the season at Oaklawn is on par with the best dirt racing being conducted anywhere at this time of year. Therefore, Oaklawn will be a focal point for many bettors for the winter racing season until early spring.

Oaklawn is dirt racing-only with no turf course. The Oaklawn dirt track is a one-mile oval, and the vast majority of its races will be run at three distances – six furlongs, one mile, and 1 1/16 miles. There is an alternate finish line at the sixteenth pole which accommodates one-mile races with a fair run-up into the first turn.

To get a handicapping leg up at the meet, let’s start by looking at some post-position and running style preferences on the Oaklawn track layout at the various key distances of six furlongs, one mile, and 1 1/16 miles.

Oaklawn handicappers might have noticed the past few years that outside running paths have been effective regardless of a horse’s post position. There has sometimes been a discernable outside flow to many of Oaklawn’s races the past four years as outside paths have seemed preferable on many days. It’s not uncommon to see exactas like 11-12 or 8-9 coming in, so pay attention and try to judge if the track is favoring outside paths.

Oaklawn Preferred Running Styles

From a statistical standpoint, inside speed horses and other horses from inside posts still do the best in Oaklawn routes. Post positions gradually get less effective as you go outward from the inside three posts.

At the distance of 1 1/16 miles in a sample of 138 races run at the 2023-’24 Oaklawn season, inside posts 1-3 won 41% of the races, middle posts 4-6 won 37% of the races, and outside posts won 22%. These percentages have been fairly consistent each of the last five years.

Sweeping rallies were effective at the 2023-'24 Oaklawn meet. (Eclipse Sportswire)

In terms of running styles, horses on or close to the pace (defined for this article as leading or within a length of the leader) won 28% of the races at 1 1/16 miles last season. Stalkers, as defined as coming from between one and four lengths off the pace, did best with wins in 55 of the 138 races to account for 40%. Closers coming from more than four lengths off the pace did surprisingly well and won 32% of the 1 1/16-mile races, meaning that closers statistically did better than speedsters at this distance last season.

At the distance of one mile, from a sample of 84 races run last season, early speed horses did much better than at 1 1/16 miles. This perhaps is because the alternate finish line at a mile leads to a short stretch run to the finish line. Speedsters won 34 of the 84 Oaklawn miles last season to win 40% of the races and were equally effective from all posts. Stalkers and closers each won 30% of the races. This marked a big improvement for closers last season as opposed to the three years before when they accounted for wins in just 23% of the races at one mile.

Inside, middle, and outside posts were all remarkably fair last season at one mile, where you would expect inside posts to enjoy an advantage, perhaps due to the outside flow to the track mentioned above that Oaklawn has seemed to develop.

Oaklawn Sprint Winning Profiles

There were 389 sprint races run last season at Oaklawn, and 378 of them were at the distance of six furlongs. Average field size at Oaklawn continues an upward trajectory and reached 9.4 runners per sprint last season.

Oaklawn sprints are much more conducive to speed than routes, and early speed is the strongly preferred running style. Horses on or close to the pace won 186 of the 389 sprints last season to account for wins in 48% of the races. Results got worse the farther you were behind. Stalkers won 32% of last season’s Oaklawn sprints, while closers won just 21%. When trying to pick winners in Oaklawn sprints, running style is a much more important factor than post positions. Posts were fair across the starting gate in sprints last season, but take note that stalkers, in particular, performed much better from outside posts than from inside posts.

Oaklawn Jockeys

There has been a changing of the guard in the Oaklawn jockey standings the last couple of the years. Fans accustomed to seeing Ricardo Santana Jr. atop the leaderboard now look for Cristian Torres to ride the most winners at the meet.

Torres won 2024 Smarty Jones Stakes on Catching Freedom. (Eclipse Sportswire)

The 2023-’24 Oaklawn riding title went to Torres for the second straight year with 82 wins from 457 mounts for an 18% win percentage. Torres was also the 2022-’23 leading rider at Oaklawn when he won 100 races from 487 starters for 21%. Torres beat out second-leading rider Keith Asmussen last year by a wide margin as Asmussen won 58 races for 16%. The second-leading rider two years ago, Francisco Arrieta, slid to third with 49 wins (12%) last year, which was a big dip in production from where he was when he won 83 races for 21% in 2022-’23.

Santana was the multi-year riding champion at Oaklawn with meet titles from 2013 through 2018, and 2020 and 2021. Santana started riding fewer mounts two years ago but still won 51 races (19%) in 2022-’23. Last year, he was down to 39 wins (17%), which was tied for sixth in the standings. Santana has long formed a lethal jockey-trainer combination with Steve Asmussen at Oaklawn, but they team up on fewer winners at Oaklawn these days with Keith Asmussen taking a lot of the mounts that used to go to Santana.

Along with Torres, Asmussen, Arrieta, and Santana, the other jockey you can look for in the Oaklawn Park top 5 this season will be Ramon Vazquez, a stalwart in the Oaklawn jockey standings for more than a decade who often played second fiddle behind Santana during Santana’s run of meet titles. Vazquez is redoubling his efforts at Oaklawn this season after finishing seventh in last year’s standings with 39 wins (12%).

Oaklawn Top Trainers

Asmussen in 2024 at Oaklawn Park. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Steve Asmussen is the 13-time leading trainer at Oaklawn Park, who equaled Cole Norman’s 2003 record with 71 wins (71-for-461, 15%) last year. Asmussen also set the Oaklawn all-time single-season mark for purse earnings with $6.68 million for the meet, which will be a tough act to follow. Asmussen is approaching 1000 career victories at Oaklawn and should eclipse that milestone this season. One key to Asmussen’s success last season was that he really focused on the newer December part of the Oaklawn meet after getting off to slow starts in the two years before.

One trainer you probably don’t have to worry about getting off to a slow start at Oaklawn is Brad Cox, who annually enjoys fast starts at Oaklawn. Cox recorded three wins and three seconds with his first seven Oaklawn starters of the 2023-’24 meet. He had won three of his 12 December starts at the 2022-’23 meet, and had blazing hot starts three and four years ago — he won nine of his first 23 races three years ago and five of his first 13 races four years ago. Cox doesn’t start enough horses at Oaklawn to compete for the meet training title, but he’s the win-percentage king among the top-tier of trainers at Oaklawn. Overall, he went 26-for-102 for 25% last season, and had similar high win percentages in the seasons prior when he won 21% in 2022-’23, year, 24% in 2021-’22, and 27% at the 2021 meet.

Two years ago, Robertino Diodoro led the Oaklawn meet with 61 winners from 266 starters for 24%, but last year he dropped all the way down to fourth place with a 27-for-149 record (18%).

Ken McPeek had a big season at Oaklawn Park last year when he was the second-leading trainer with 30 wins from 162 starters for 19%. Among his winners at last year’s meet were Mystik Dan in the Southwest Stakes and Thorpedo Anna in the Fantasy Stakes. Thorpedo Anna went on to win the 2024 Longines Kentucky Oaks and Mystik Dan went on to win the 2024 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve.

Chris Hartman finished third in last year’s Oaklawn trainer standings with 28 wins (19%) in a good follow-up to his even better meet in 2022-’23 when he had 37 wins for 26%. Look for Hartman to finish in the top five once again.

Other select trainers for handicappers to be aware of at Oaklawn this season include Norm Casse, who won 11 races from 52 starters last year for 21% after winning 13 of 38 starts for 34% two years ago. Cipriano Contreras also has been a high-percentage winner at Oaklawn recently, including a 22-for-84 record in 2023-’24. Ron Moquett starts a ton of horses at Oaklawn. He was sixth in the win standings last year with 22 winners and finished as the fifth-leading trainer two years ago with 19 victories.

Some high-profile trainers who disappointed last year included McLean Robertson (6-for-110, 5%), Eusebio Rufino (5-for-96, 5%), Timothy Martin (5-for-137, 4%), and Robert Cline (4-for-120, 3%).

There are five months of great racing ahead at Oaklawn Park. Factor Oaklawn’s prevailing biases and top human connections into your handicapping, and you will have a big advantage over your fellow horseplayers. Best of luck and enjoy the season.