NTRA release

Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas will send out Dublin in Saturday’s Grade II, $300,000 Rebel Stakes, a mile-and-a-sixteenth event for three-year-olds at Oaklawn Park. Dublin, the second place finisher in the recent Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn, was flying at the end of the one mile Southwest and just failed to catch the undefeated winner, Conveyance. 

Winner of the Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga last summer, Dublin has been highly-regarded ever since and is expected to improve with distance.  His Southwest Stakes effort came on the heels of surgery for an entrapped epiglottis and gave trainer Lukas plenty of confidence that the colt is on the right track to Triple Crown success.  He continues to train brilliantly and will be tough to handle on Saturday.

Saturday’s race will be a major test for Dublin, since he will likely do battle with two of the most highly-respected members of the three-year-old crop.  Among those entered for Saturday’s Rebel are Watson, Pegram and Weltman’s 2009 two-year-old juvenile champion Lookin At Lucky, and Chasing Dreams Racing 2008’s Noble’s Promise, both considered among the top ten Triple Crown prospects.

Lookin At Lucky comes from the barn of yet another Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, who has scored with both of the horses he has sent to Oaklawn for stakes events this far this year, Conveyance in the Southwest and Freedom Star in the Azeri.  The bay son of Smart Strike, who also sired former Oaklawn champion Curlin, has won five of six outings, losing only in a photo to Vale Of York in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita. Baffert has expressed a desire to give the winner of $1,243,000 a chance to prove himself on conventional dirt, since all his previous efforts have been on synthetic tracks.

“If it was dirt, I would leave him [at Santa Anita],” said Baffert on an NTRA national media teleconference. “I know what he can do here. I want to see what he can do on dirt.” Champion jockey Garrett Gomez, a former regular at Oaklawn, will be back in the saddle atop Lookin At Lucky on Saturday.

Noble’s Promise, trained by another former Oaklawn regular, Ken McPeek, has hopes of gaining a measure of revenge, having suffered losses in his last two races to Lookin At Lucky.  The bay son of Cuvee followed a win in Keeneland’s Breeders’ Futurity Stakes with a third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, then second to Lookin At Lucky in Hollywood Park’s Cash Call Futurity.  His record now shows three wins from six starts and earnings of $733,500.  However, like Lookin At Lucky, all his success has been on synthetic tracks, so trainer McPeek is seeking out a good test on a conventional dirt track prior to his assault on the Triple Crown.