Slide Show
Career: 1993-1996
Year Inducted: 2023
When the chestnut filly Slide Show walked onto the racetrack at Remington Park, the fans who raced to the window to bet her to win were almost as fast as this red streak. She rarely disappointed, lining their pockets with cash.
The Oklahoma-bred daughter of Slewacide, out of the Silent Screen mare Screen Landing, won 11 races in a row at Remington Park before she was finally defeated on this oval. This lightning-fast filly, trained by Wade White and owned by Joe Colley and Deanne White, won at distances from six furlongs to 1-1/16 miles on the dirt and the turf. The versatile runner began her career as a 2-year-old in 1993 and won all four of her races as a juvenile filly. When she turned 3-years-old she extending her winning streak to five in a row, winning her third stakes race – the $30,000 Purcell Stakes on March 13, 1994. The first two stakes victories of her career came in the $50,000 Oklahoma Classics Lassie for Oklahoma-bred fillies at six furlongs on Nov. 14, 1993. She followed that up with an allowance win and a trip to the winner’s circle in the $40,000 Oklahoma Thoroughbred Association Futurity on Dec. 5, 1993. Her maiden win and her career debut came on Oct. 24, 1993. Jockey Casey Lambert was aboard for her first win and Don Pettinger took over for the next four victories.
In 1994, she would quickly turn into the kind of filly her connections believed had a chance to win the biggest race for fillies in North America – the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks. Slide Show’s path to that race was paved with promise and glory. After winning the Purcell Stakes, her connections decided to put her on the highway to Kentucky through Arkansas. She was shipped to Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs to try their 3-year-old filly stakes trail. Slide Show competed in the Grade 3, $75,000 Honeybee Stakes. She had the lead by a full length coming into the stretch but was caught in the final stages, running second to Shadow Miss by 3-1/2 lengths. That did not deter her team, as she moved on to the Grade 2 Fantasy Stakes on April 17, 1994. She showed improvement, running second in the tougher race, losing by only one length to Two Altazano, a multiple graded stakes winner.
The game effort in the Fantasy helped punch Slide Show’s ticket to the Grade 1, $250,000 Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. Under Pettinger, Slide Show battled for the lead in the 1-1/8 miles until reaching the stretch where she gave way and finished fifth, beaten 14 lengths behind Sardula.
Thoroughbred horses raced in the spring and the fall at Remington Park in 1994, so Slide Show returned when the leaves began changing colors and extended her winning streak to seven in a row. She impressively stepped out of the box and ran against the colts and geldings for the first time in her career on Oct. 2, winning the $35,000 Oklahoma Thoroughbred Association Derby by 2-1/2 lengths under Tim Camargo. That was followed by her romp in the $45,000 Oklahoma Classics Distaff by six lengths. The thing that made that win so eye-opening was that she left Just Wanna Dance, a multiple stakes winner, in her dust, pulling away by daylight to win by eight lengths.
In 1995, she continued her romp over competition at Remington Park by winning four more races to move to 11 in a row, eight of them stakes wins. The first two came on the turf course.
Her 11-race win streak did not come easy, however. Slide Show had won eight in a row coming into the $25,000 Carris Memorial Handicap on Sept. 24, 1995 on the grass when she was actually beaten across the finish line by multiple stakes winner She’s a Bullet. Slide Show was steadied in the stretch by jockey R.D. Williams, who had taken over as her top rider. When the stewards looked at the replay, Slide Show was placed first and her streak was intact at nine.
Slide Show then won the $15,000 Oklahoma Matchmaker Handicap in October before facing males for a second, and last time, in the $75,000 Oklahoma Classics Classic on November 5, 1995. The most incredible thing about those races, her final two Remington Park wins, was that the former came at six furlongs and the latter at 1-1/16 miles. She could do anything you asked.
The Classic was the richest race in the divisional Classics stakes series for Oklahoma-breds. Slide Show was by far the most talented that afternoon, going to the front in the field of eight through the final turn, then putting her male rivals away to win by 3-3/4 lengths.
Slide Show went to the starting gate 21 days after her Classics victory on Nov. 26, 1995 for a six-furlong allowance race. She dueled for the lead early in a short field of four but could not take over the event most believed she would win easily. She ran third as Puzzled Look and Waltzing Woman became the only two horses to officially beat her in a race at Remington Park, finishing first and second in that allowance. It would be Slide Show’s final race in Oklahoma City.
Slide Show finished her career with 25 starts, 12 wins, five seconds and two thirds for $347,917 in total earnings. She made $216,306 of her money at Remington Park, in a time of racing when purses were far less than today.