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00:00Let's meet the field here.
00:01We can start with the number one, Go West Go.
00:04This is a race where they're running for $1.25 million.
00:08So big money up for grabs here.
00:11Go West Go is going to be stepping up.
00:13He's just not in the best of form as of late.
00:15So this is going to be a much tougher group than what he's faced.
00:19That's why he's 30 to 1 on the morning line.
00:21You can see the odds there.
00:23We can move to the number two, Disarm.
00:25He's an interesting horse because a couple years ago, he was a three-year-old and he ran in the Kentucky Derby.
00:32He ran fourth and he ran in the Travers and the Jim Dandy, some of the really top tier races for three-year-olds.
00:39So coming off of that last year in 2024, we were expecting him to have grown up and developed and expecting a really big year for him.
00:47It's kind of disappointing last year, but he was off from September all the way to March.
00:52And when he showed back up in March, he ran a really good race.
00:56Maybe they figured things out.
00:58It's not always linear, right, for how athletes improve.
01:01A horse is the same way.
01:02We're not robots.
01:03It's not machinery.
01:04You don't just have, you know, a projection that you can follow.
01:08Everything is a little bit different.
01:10And I think that might be the case for Disarm.
01:12He could run a really big race in here.
01:14Moving to the three first mission, he's one of the horses to beat.
01:17He's two to one on the morning line.
01:19So he has the shortest odds in the field.
01:21He comes into this race, though, off a third-place finish, and the two horses that were in front of him are both back in this race.
01:28Now, the way that the track was playing when first mission ran most recently, it didn't really play well to horses that were coming from off the pace.
01:38So if you were up front early, the track was really kind to horses that were showing speed.
01:44We see this a lot of times, like in tennis with different surfaces, or if you're running in a track meet, and sometimes a surface plays to the horses on the front end.
01:52Wind will factor those types of things.
01:55I expect first mission to run a good race in here.
01:57He's one of the horses to beat, but you're not going to get rich betting him at just two to one.
02:02Moving on to Skippy Longstocking.
02:05This is a horse who has earned over $3 million in his career.
02:11He is a really cool six-year-old, hard-knocking horse.
02:15Most recently, he won a stakes race over at Tampa Bay Downs, and he finished third in the Pegasus World Cup, which is a really big race run at Gulfstream Park.
02:25So Skippy Longstocking feels like he's one of the major players in this race.
02:29In fact, he actually was in this very same race last year and won this race.
02:36So he's trying to go back-to-back in the Oaklawn Handicap.
02:39Moving to the number five, Alexander Helios.
02:42He's kind of an on-the-rise horse.
02:45He's won two in a row.
02:47He just beat Banishing.
02:49He just beat First Mission.
02:50But he did get a really good setup in the race that he won last time out.
02:55So you want to make sure that you don't get too short of a price on him because things played very, very well for him.
03:03In horse racing and in any kind of sport, you don't necessarily want to bet a team or a horse or an athlete off of maybe their best effort because sometimes it's tough to put that best effort back-to-back.
03:16You're not going to usually get the efficient races or the efficient games back-to-back.
03:20Tarantino, next one up.
03:22I like the films, but I'm not sure if he's going to fit in this particular spot.
03:27He will be showing some good early speed.
03:29He'll be part of the race early on.
03:31I just don't know if he'll be hanging around late.
03:34The number seven, Banishing, to me was sort of the trickiest horse in this field.
03:39I had a tough time figuring out what to do with him because his best races are going a little bit shorter.
03:45This race is a mile and an eighth, and I feel like that's just too far for Banishing, but he's got so much ability.
03:52Sometimes horses that are really good can go outside their scope because of that talent.
03:58So I won't really want to talk you off Banishing.
04:00I just like some others a little bit more in here.
04:03Rounding out the field, it's the number eight, Red Route 1.
04:07And if you look at the projection, you see the eight.
04:10He's way in the back.
04:11You know what you're going to get from Red Route 1.
04:13He's going to drop back.
04:15He will likely be last early in the field.
04:18He hopes that they're going fast early.
04:20And I think on paper, it looks like there are a few horses that are all going to be pushing each other early on.
04:26And when they push each other, it's going to set up for a horse coming from off the pace.
04:31And I think that's Red Route 1, the number eight, who is 15-1 on the morning line.
04:36He will be my top selection for the Oak Lawn Handicap.