DECLINED PULLS OFF UPSET IN FEATURED ALLOWANCE RACE AT 13-1 ODDS
A 5-year-old son of champion Will Take Charge, Declined, skimmed the rail in his 7-furlong $34,000 allowance feature Wednesday night at Remington Park and held off all challengers to pull off the upset at 13-1 odds.
It was trainer Danny Pish’s second win on the card as Weston Hamilton measured the 7-8ths of a mile well for horses entered at the first-level allowance over the main track. Only one horse beat Declined from the gate and it wasn’t long before Declined took over and the front-running Jackman’s Ride (7-1) faded to next-to-last in the field of nine. The longshot winner cruised into the stretch with a two-length lead before pulling away to a 3-1/4 length victory.
The son of the 2013 3-year-old Champion, Will Take Charge, who lost the Breeders’ Cup Classic that year by a nose to Mucho Macho Man, looked a lot like his daddy, pulling away in the latter stages of this race. He is out of the Sky Mesa mare Culotte and was bred in Kentucky by TK Stables.
Declined paid $29.20 to win, $12.40 to place and $8.20 to show. He earned $20,196 for owners GFB Racing (Stacy Gee) of Argyle, Texas in the victory and improved his record to 20 starts, three wins, three seconds and three thirds for $103,302 in his bankroll.
Declined was right there for every fraction of the race, covering the first quarter mile in :22.20 seconds, the half-mile in :44.92, and 6 furlongs in 1:10.12 before hitting the wire in a final time of 1:23.58. Shanghai’s Dream (13-1) made a move at him down the stretch but the Steve Asmussen-trained horse could not cut into the margin. He finished the race 3-1/4 lengths ahead of third-place finisher Implicator (11-1). That $2 exacta with back-to-back 13-1 shots was worth $407.40. The 50-cent trifecta with all double-digit odds returned $509.65. The 9-5 favorite, Red N Wild, checked in fourth, just losing that third-place spot by a half-length. Red N Wild had finished third in last year’s $200,000 Springboard Mile, the cornerstone race for 2-year-olds here.
Declined broke his maiden at Turfway Park in Kentucky on Jan. 3, 2020, and since then he has tried to return to the winner’s circle five other times in first-level allowances without success. Declined finally found a field at this level he could beat. He had run third at 7 furlongs in his previous race at Remington Park among claiming 15,000 non-winners of three on Aug. 28. He only lost at the distance by 1-1/2 lengths that night, but showed he could compete at 7-8ths of a mile. He was the 6-5 favorite in that defeat.
Racing continues this week with a Thursday-Saturday schedule, Sept. 30-Oct. 2. First post time nightly is 7:07 p.m.
Tracked by more than 167,000 fans on Facebook and 10,400 Twitter followers, Remington Park has provided more than $272 Million to the State of Oklahoma general education fund since the opening of the casino in 2005. Located at the junction of Interstates 35 & 44, in the heart of the Oklahoma City Adventure District, Remington Park is home for the $1,000,000 Oklahoma Classics Night, an evening of stakes racing to celebrate Oklahoma-breds, on Friday, Oct. 15. Simulcast horse racing featured daily, the casino is always open! Visit remingtonpark.com for more information.
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