Max Player Returns at Oaklawn After Quiet 2022 Campaign
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Photo: Skip Dickstein
Max Player trains in 2021 at Del Mar
Following a 2022 campaign in which he was unplaced in three graded stakes, 2021 Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes (G1) winner Max Player looks to rebound after a long layoff in the third race at Oaklawn Park Feb. 25.
The race is a $106,000 allowance optional claimer at 1 1/16 miles, a distance shorter than Max Player's preferred trip of 1 1/4 miles, over which he won both the Jockey Club Gold Cup and Suburban Stakes (G2) in New York in 2021. He concluded that season with an eighth-place finish in the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) at Del Mar.
A year earlier, he won the Withers Stakes (G3) and showed in the Belmont Stakes (G1) and Travers Stakes (G1).
Ricardo Santana Jr., aboard for his stakes victories in 2021, rides the 6-year-old son of Honor Code for Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen. The George Hall and Annestes Racing-owned horse is 5-1 odds on the morning line in his first start since fourth in a follow-up appearance in the Suburban this past July.
Saturday's third race includes Caddo River , who won the 2021 Smarty Jones Stakes at Oaklawn and later placed in the Arkansas Derby (G1). He was recently second in a Jan. 21 allowance optional claimer at the Arkansas oval.
The Shortleaf Stable homebred 5-year-old Hard Spun horse starts for Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas after being conditioned by Brad Cox. Caddo River is the 3-1 second choice behind Flying P Stable's 2-1 favorite Frosted Grace .