Zipse: Wet Paint impresses on a wet track on Kentucky Oaks trail
On a wet and chilly weekend at Oaklawn Park, Confidence Game stamped himself a Kentucky Derby 2023 contender with a win in the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes. He was not the horse I left Oaklawn Park feeling best about, however.
One race before the boys took to the rain-soaked track, it was Wet Paint who really made an impression. Although the Rebel winner will have much to prove moving forward, the daughter of Blame already has the look of a top contender for this year’s Kentucky Oaks.
Stuck on the rail and still well behind as the large Honeybee Stakes (G3) field turned for home, it briefly looked like it might not be the day for the 17-10 race favorite. That worry would be short lived. Asked to go by rider Flavien Prat, she moved like a shot on the leaders.
Moving quickly to the outside of a tiring rival, Wet Paint attacked between horses and within a matter of seconds she took over the race. Finishing off the job in style, the Brad Cox-trained filly powered home to win going away by three full lengths.
The victory in the Honeybee was her third win in five career starts. Bred to love a distance, the Godolphin homebred has been better with every start. As impressed as I was with her performance Saturday, there are still questions to be answered by Wet Paint.
First and foremost, she will need to prove that she is as good on a fast racing surface as she is on a wet one.
After breaking her maiden in her second career start over a sloppy track last fall at Horseshoe Indianapolis, she has found and won on two more wet racing surfaces. Both came at Oaklawn Park.
Last out, the good-looking bay made her first start as a 3-year-old a victorious one, with a strong stretch rally to win the Martha Washington Stakes. That impressive run came over a wet-fast track. Saturday’s win in the Honeybee came on a sloppy and sealed surface.
A strong workout over a fast track in preparation for the Honeybee, as well as her pedigree, has me confident that Wet Paint will not need an off track to shine. As of now, though, all three of her career wins have come when it was wet.
In fact, she has yet to run on a fast, dirt track, having debuted on turf and then run on Turfway’s all-weather surface in her third career start.
The new leader on the Kentucky Oaks leaderboard also might be questioned for the final time of Saturday’s victory. Her winning time for the 8 1/2-furlong race was 1:45.35, which was just over a second slower than that of Confidence Game.
I believe the internal fractions of the two races tell much of the story of the difference in final times. The leading fillies of the Honeybee carved out fractions of only 48.19 seconds for the half-mile and 1:13.51 for the first six furlongs, the Rebel was run much faster early. The boys ran in 46.17 seconds for the half and 1:11.45 for three-quarters.
Having been more than two seconds behind the males in the Rebel, Wet Paint was able to close the disparity in times nearly in half with her explosive stretch kick in the Honeybee.
Given the slow pace and being well back and behind horses on a messy track with 11 fillies ahead of her, you can see why the Honeybee performance impressed me so much.
The courageous run through the slop should set her up quite well for a shot in the Kentucky Oaks in just over two months. Before that filly classic, Wet Paint likely will get one more start either April 1 in the Fantasy (G3) at Oaklawn or Keeneland’s Ashland (G1) on April 7.
More distance should only help the daughter of Blame, out of a Street Cry mare, and her progression from race to race is obvious. The competition will only get tougher from here on out, but the filly I saw Saturday looks the real deal.
Last year’s winner of both the Martha Washington and Honeybee was Secret Oath, who of course went on to win the 2022 edition of the Kentucky Oaks. Wet Paint looks very much like a filly who could repeat the feat in 2023.