O'Neill arrives at Oaklawn Park for 'Saratoga-like' meet

By Bob Wisener

HOT SPRINGS, Ark -- A Hall of Fame jockey and a Kentucky Derby-winning trainer, both wintering in Arkansas for the first time, have acclimated themselves to new surroundings.

Gary Stevens rode a winner and Doug O'Neill saddled another on Friday's opening nine-race card at Oaklawn Park. Stevens scored in Race 2 with his second of four mounts, the maiden Articulator, a Quality Road 3-year-old trained by Billy Gowan.

Second in the meet opener with favored Pray Hard, a survivor of December's stable fire at San Luis Rey Downs, O'Neill watched Edwin Maldonado boot home 5-year-old gelding Dangerfield in Race 5. Both Articulator and Dangerfield were betting favorites.

Stevens and O'Neill have made successful forays from California for Oaklawn stakes races, Stevens riding Arkansas Derby winners Tank's Prospect in 1985 and Silver Ending in 1990. O'Neill found himself  impressed with Oaklawn's "Saratoga-like" atmosphere when he saddled Classy Cara to victory in the 2000 Fantasy Stakes.

Both credit mutual friend and horse owner Mark Schlesinger, a Hot Springs native, with steering them to Oaklawn. Stevens listed five "quality" reasons for his switch, among them record local purses including $75,000 for maiden special weights. "I love the money," Stevens told an enthusiastic crowd at Oaklawn's annual kickoff banquet in North Little Rock, Ark.

O'Neill, trainer of Kentucky Derby winners I'll Have Another (2012) and Nyquist (2016), sparked cheers that "my road to the Triple Crown this year will definitely go through Hot Springs."

Oaklawn racing officials talked O'Neill into sending a string of horses to Arkansas during visits last year to Del Mar and Santa Anita.

"Everything I heard about Oaklawn from them and other people was great," O'Neill said. "So I decided, why not give it a shot?"

"Oaklawn is a special racetrack," he said. "People come out to the races and really know their stuff."

Stevens keeps getting positive feedback about riding at Oaklawn, hoping for a successful season that will lead him to Keeneland and Churchill Downs.

"You seem to have a pep in your step," Stevens said in relaying a message from his father, a 79-year-old horse trainer. Scott Stevens rode at Oaklawn years ago and told his famous younger brother, "You're going to have the best winter you've ever had."

Stevens is reunited at Oaklawn with Hall of Fame trainer Wayne Lukas, for whom he rode Kentucky Derby winners Winning Colors (1988) and Thunder Gulch (1995). Stevens' 1985 Arkansas Derby victory on Tank's Prospect represented the jockey's first in a $500,000 stakes race.

Stevens worked the Lukas-trained Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes winner Sporting Chance at Oaklawn last week in advance of the Tiznow colt's expected 3-year-old debut later in the meeting. Stevens' most recent victory in a Triple Crown race came aboard the Lukas-trained and Oaklawn-raced Oxbow in the 2013 Preakness.

"Wayne Lukas is one of my two surrogate fathers," Stevens said. "The other one (referring to Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg, at whose Jan. 8 memorial service in Hot Springs Stevens spoke), we buried the other day."

Bob Wisener covers horse racing for The Sentinel-Record of Hot Springs, Ark., where he was sports editor for 37 years.