Oklahoma Classics Cup draws 24 nominations
OKLAHOMA CITY — The only certainty for this year’s feature race on Oklahoma Classics Night, scheduled for Friday at Remington Park, is that there will be a different winner of the $175,000 main event this year.
OKLAHOMA CITY — The only certainty for this year’s feature race on Oklahoma Classics Night, scheduled for Friday at Remington Park, is that there will be a different winner of the $175,000 main event this year.
Last year’s Oklahoma Classics Cup winner for trainer Jayde Gelner, Ghost Hero, is on the shelf currently and was not nominated among the 24 horses that could go in the race. There is an intriguing matchup between the top 3-year-old Oklahoma-bred on the grounds, multiple stakes winner Flat Hanby, and the top older Oklahomabred in training, multiple stakes winner Number One Dude. Both were nominated.
“I’m still not sure we’ll run,” Flat Hanby’s trainer Boyd “Jobie” Caster said. “I don’t know about beating those older horses.”
Flat Hanby, a 3-year-old Oklahoma-bred gelding by top Oklahoma sire Flat Out, from the Ocean Terrace mare Jealous Ellis, has been racing in events restricted to 3-year-olds this year, but he has won three stakes races in the process and had won five races in a row before running fifth in the recent Grade 3, $400,000 Oklahoma Derby at Remington Park.
Flat Hanby won the $50,000 Canterbury Derby in Minnesota over a muddy track, going a mile on June 22 this year, which was his third win in a row and his first stakes try. Racing for owners J.T. Stables (Joe and Theresa Moore of Tontitown, Ark.), he then won the $70,000 Iowa Stallion Stakes at Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa, on July 20, and the $50,000 Oklahoma Stallion Handicap for Colts and Geldings at Remington Park on Sept. 6. He has had three different jockeys for each stakes win. Floyd Wethey, Jr., rode him in his Remington Park races. The successful gelding has raced eight times, winning five and pocketing $131,722 in the process.
The main competition for all in the Oklahoma Classics Cup might be Number One Dude, who has shown no signs of letting up in his 6-yearold season. This gelded Oklahoma-bred son of American Lion, out of the Macho Uno mare Ebony Uno, would be the top money-earner in the field with $552,168 bankrolled from 33 races. He has won several stakes races and been first or second in 20 of his 33 tries for trainer Scott Young and owner Terry Westemeir of Broken Arrow.
Number One Dude has won nine black-type races and five of those stakes wins have come at Remington Park. His big wins in Oklahoma City began with the $100,000 Oklahoma Classics Juvenile (Oct. 16, 2020) as a 2-year-old, followed by $75,000 Don McNeill Stakes (Nov. 13, 2020), $50,000 Oklahoma Stallion Stakes (Sept. 10, 2021), $70,000 Jim Thorpe Stakes (Dec. 17, 2021) and $70,000 Red Earth Stakes (Sept. 23, 2022).
Number One Dude hasn’t won a stakes here in the past couple of years, but he did run second to Ghost Hero last year in the Oklahoma Classics Cup and a strong second to stakes winner Silver Prospector at Remington Park on Sept. 4. Silver Prospector, as a 3-year-old, won the Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park, before falling off the Kentucky Derby trail. He also ran a sharp second in the Grade 3, $500,000 Oaklawn Mile Stakes on Jan. 13 this year.
Number One Dude is a home-bred for Westemeir and has a lifetime running line of 33 starts, 10 wins, 10 seconds and two thirds for more than a half-million. He finished 1,5 lengths ahead of thirdplace finisher Absaroka in last year’s Oklahoma Classics Cup. Absaroka has been nominated for this year’s event as well.
