Oaklawn

HOT SPRINGS—I walked for 42:07 on an elaborate route I guess is roughly 2.56 miles long this afternoon before the start of the Fifth Season Stakes. The advance turned out OK, I think.

QUESTION OF THE DAY. ...Did this explanation make anyone else ask, "Do the fuck what?"

Mr. Biden’s lead personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Biden’s legal team had tried to balance being transparent with “the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”

PETE PERKINS

HOT SPRINGS — A mix of old favorites and familiar stars will race in the $150,000 1-mile Fifth Season Stakes for horses four years old and up at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort today.

Ten-year-old Rated R Superstar, the defending Fifth Season winner and the winner of Oaklawn’s Grade III Essex Handicap last season, and the six-year-old gelded Ginobili, who once hinted at true superstardom, are among 10 older horses entered in the 2022-23 Fifth Season, the ninth race on today’s 10-race Oaklawn card.

Post-time for the 37th Fifth Season is scheduled for 4:22 p.m.

Ginobili, despite two off-the-board finishes in two career starts at Oaklawn, will bring a run of west-coast success to the Fifth Season from trainer Peter Miller’s California stable. Ginobili is the 7-5 morning-line Fifth Season favorite.

“We had an allowance race that we were looking at out here, but it didn’t go,” Miller said. “We pivoted to this a couple of weeks ago.”

Ginobili, when he raced for part-owner and currently suspended trainer Richard Baltas, became noteworthy when he led Nadal through 6 furlongs in 1:09.05 in the 7-furlong San Vicente Stakes on Feb. 9, 2020. Nadal won 3/4 lengths in front of second-place Ginobili. Four weeks and four days later, the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered the world. The handful of fans who watched Nadal win the 2020 Grade II Rebel Stakes and Grade I Arkansas Derby watched through Oaklawn’s chain-linked fences from the front parking lot and backstretch. The frightened crowd inside the gates was limited to essential personnel and observers.

Nadal was sent to retirement at 4 4-0-0, with three graded-stakes wins, after an ankle injury in mid-May 2020. His purse earnings under Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert were $1,053,000.

Ginobili (16 3-3-1, $472,325) won his only graded-stakes start in the Grade II 7-furlong Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar in August 2021. He would finish second in the 2021 Grade I Breeder’s Cup Dirt Mile at Del Mar in November. After a sixth-place finish in the Grade I Cigar Mile Handicap at Aqueduct in December 2021, a left foreleg injury in February 2022 led to a 10-month break. Ginobili returned to finish second by a head in his last start, a 6-furlong optional-claiming race at Del Mar won in 1:08.27 on Nov. 20, 2022.

“He ran great off the layoff, and he’s trained super since,” Miller said.

 Ginobili was moved from Baltas’ stable to Miller’s before Baltas was suspended by California Horse Racing Board stewards in early December 2022 for allegedly violating race-day medication rules.

Ricardo Santana, Jr., is the listed rider for Ginobili.

Soy Tapatio, the Fifth Season’s 9-2 second choice, is entered from trainer Robertino Diodoro’s barn. Diodoro leads Oaklawn’s trainer standings with 17 wins through Friday. His current wins total includes three in Oaklawn stakes races.

 Soy Tapatio, a five-year-old gelded son of Not This Time, won the Zia Park Championship in a track-record time for 1 mile and 1/8th of 1:47.18 in Hobbs, N.M., on Nov. 22.

“He’s done well for us,” Diodoro said. “He’s a nice little horse.”

Cristian Torres, Oaklawn’s leading rider with 17 wins through Friday, is listed to ride Soy Tapatio.

Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen has entered the six-year-old Silver Prospector, 20-1 on the morning line. A win for Silver Prospector would extend Asmussen’s training record for stakes wins at Oaklawn to 98. Silver Prospector’s win in the 2020 Grade III Southwest Stakes is among Asmussen’s record total.

The gelded Rated R Superstar (65 13-10-8, $1,781,280), a son of Kodiak Cowboy owned by Danny Caldwell, is trained by Martin Villafranco, the son of Rated R Superstar’s former trainer Federico Villafranco. Rated R Superstar won in his last start, the 1-mile-and-70-yard Jeffrey A. Hawk Memorial Stakes at Remington Park on Dec. 17.

“He’s got to have several factors go right to be able, with his running style, to win,” Caldwell said. “One reason I think he’s been able to stay sound all these years is his running style. He kind of just gallops around the track and lets everyone go, and then he’ll run the last half-mile. That’s kind of the way he does it, and you’re not going to change the way he does it no matter what jockey you put on him. He’s going to do it his way, and his way’s won 1.7 million dollars.”

Issac Castillo is set to ride Rated R Superstar in the Fifth Season.

An ideal setup for Rated R Superstar, 4-1 on the Fifth Season morning line, requires a non-speed-favoring racetrack with plenty of early speed entered, Caldwell said. Three Fifth Season entrants led from the gate in their last start.

“When you give away a hundred fifty thousand, I don’t care where it’s at, people are going to show up,” Caldwell said. “And that’s what they do. They show up to get the money.”

Caldwell is ready to show up and perhaps show off with a sixth career Oaklawn win for Rated R Superstar.

“It should be a good race,” Caldwell said. “It will be. If everything goes right, maybe we’ll get there.”