The $250,000, Grade 3 Whitmore Stakes Saturday at Oaklawn Park showcases a field of seven talented sprinters. Fittingly, the six-furlong race is named for the exceptional sprinter who won more than $4.5 million, including the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and three editions of the Count Fleet Sprint Handicap at Oaklawn.
In terms of career accomplishments, Tejano Twist has to be mentioned first, having earned over $1.2 million including the 2023 Whitmore. Cowan is just a little under $34,000 shy of reaching the $1 million mark for his career and enters the race off a neck defeat less than two weeks ago in New York. Ryvit has won seven of his 14 career races, including the Steel Valley Sprint Stakes in November, and enters this race off a win over the track three weeks ago. Jaxon Traveler is another with top credentials, having won eight times in his career and approaching $750,000 in career earnings, some of that earned winning the Bill Thomas Memorial Stakes in February. Surveillance won a trio of sprint stakes races during winter 2022-23 as well as his most recent race, and is another who should be competitive. Similarly, Ninja Warrior won almost four weeks ago on this track and enters the race in top form as well as makes his third start off a layoff. Osbourne rounds out the field, and although he finished fourth in his two most recent races, he has stakes credentials as he was second in the Remington Springboard Mile in the fall of his 2-year-old season in 2021.
Main win contenders:
Ryvit appears to have a slight edge as the only 4-year-old in the race. Not being as fully mature as older horses, Ryvit still may run faster than he did just three weeks ago on Feb. 23 when he opened up by three lengths at the top of the stretch and coasted to a two-length win. Not only did Ryvit earn a 112 Equibase Speed Figure, the highest last-race figure in the Whitmore field, he was making his first start following 2 ½ months off. Last May, Ryvit won the Chick Lang Stakes Presented by Case Tractor at this six-furlong distance, with a very strong 106 figure, and he earned a 109 figure in the fall of his 3-year-old year when winning the Steel Valley Sprint in November. Considering he should run even better in his second start as a 4-year-old and second off the layoff, Ryvit is the one to beat in this year’s Whitmore Stakes.
Tejano Twist won last year’s Whitmore Stakes, earning a career-best 112 figure in the process. Prior to that he had finished second in the King Cotton Stakes over Oaklawn’s track, where he earned a 107 figure. He didn’t win again until taking the Bet on Sunshine Stakes in November 2023 at Churchill Downs with a 110 figure, and then he won the Ring the Bell Stakes at Oaklawn in December. Tejano Twist’s next start came in the Feb. 3 King Cotton Stakes, where he rallied from last of six but could not get close to Skelly, who had led from the start and would not be caught. Earning the same 107 figure in this year’s King Cotton as he did last year, Tejano Twist is on a pattern to run as well as he did last year when winning the Whitmore. It must be noted that when Tejano Twist won the 2023 Whitmore, he was a 4-year-old, the same age Ryvit is this year, and that is the only reason Ryvit gets slightly more preference as a win contender than Tejano Twist in Saturday’s contest.
Osbourne may be the horse with the highest odds in this field of seven. That could be because he’s finished fourth in his last two starts and because he has only run in two stakes races in his career, including this past December in the Ring the Bell Stakes at Oaklawn. However, right before that and when adding blinkers for the very first time, Osbourne ran one of the best races of his career and earned a 105 figure. His best race ever came at Oaklawn in January 2023 when he earned a 106 figure at this distance, drawing off by seven lengths at the end. Most of his other efforts among his last eight races haven’t been much, but with Osbourne cutting back from a two-turn race to a one-turn race, where he has run his best, he might at least add to his competitive record of having finished first or second in nine of 17 races to date.
The rest of the field, with their best representative Equibase Speed Figures, is Cowan (108), Jaxon Traveler (109), Ninja Warrior (106) and Surveillance (106).
Win Contenders:
Ryvit
Tejano Twist
Longshot:
Osbourne
Pick 3
5-1/4-6
5-1/4-6
$56
Superfecta
6-2-3-4
6-2-3-4
$6
Pick 3
5-1/4-6
5-1/4-6
$56
Superfecta
6-2-3-4
6-2-3-4
$6
