4/17/26 Oaklawn Handicap Advance
By Robert Yates
$1,250,000 Oaklawn Handicap (G2) – Saturday, April 18
Reigning Horse of the Year Sovereignty, 2025 Preakness winner Journalism and 2023 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner White Abarrio headline six entrants in Saturday’s $1.25 million Oaklawn Handicap (G2) for older horses at 1 1/8 miles.
The Oaklawn Handicap anchors a 12-race card that begins at 12:45 p.m. CDT. Probable post time for the Oaklawn Handicap, the 11th race, is 6:20 p.m. Two other stakes races will be run Saturday – $200,000 Bathhouse Row for 3-year-olds at 1 1/8 miles and the $200,000 Valley of the Vapors for 3-year-old fillies at one mile.
The Oaklawn Handicap field from the rail out: White Abarrio, Irad Ortiz Jr. to ride, 121 pounds, 7-2 on the morning line; Liberal Arts, Reynier Arrieta, 116, 15-1; Sovereignty, Junior Alvarado, 123, 4-5; Duke of Duval, Keith Asmussen, 116, 20-1; Journalism, Jose Ortiz, 119, 5-2; and Publisher, Erik Asmussen, 118, 15-1.
The 2026 Oaklawn Handicap, with three times the star power, is maybe the most anticipated race in Oaklawn’s 121-year history.
“This has got to be the best Oaklawn Handicap that they’ve ever had,” said Heather Irion, who trains Grade 3 winner Liberal Arts. “It’s incredible.”
The biggest attraction is program favorite Sovereignty, a homebred for powerhouse Godolphin and Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott who will be the fourth reigning Horse of the Year to run at Oaklawn, following the Mott-trained Favorite Trick, Azeri and Thorpedo Anna.
Sovereignty won five of six starts last year, including two legs of the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes; Journalism was second in both races), but he is unraced since a 10-length romp in the Travers Stakes (G1) at 1 ¼ miles Aug. 23 at Saratoga. A son of super sire Into Mischief, Sovereignty has never faced older horses.
“I suppose the timing made this the right spot for his comeback,” Mott said Wednesday morning. “We felt like we had enough works in him. It was a mile and an eighth. We could have waited two weeks and run in the Alysheba (May 1 at Churchill Downs). It’s a mile and a sixteenth. Godolphin has another one they want to run in the Alysheba and we just kind of worked it out. We announced early that we thought we would run here, but it didn’t scare anybody off.”
Sovereignty had eight published workouts at Payson Park Training Center in south Florida in advance of the Oaklawn Handicap. The first was Feb. 15. Although unraced in almost eight months, Mott noted Sovereignty was entered in the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) Nov. 1 at Del Mar before being scratched with a fever.
Sovereignty was the 6-5 program favorite against a field that included Japanese superstar Forever Young, Eclipse Award winners Fierceness and Sierra Leone and fellow 3-year-old Journalism, a millionaire multiple Grade 1 winner.
“The thing is we were fit and ready to run in November, the same as Journalism,” Mott said. “He ran; we didn’t. But we were still a fit horse at that time. It’s not like we had been idle since August.”
Mott said Sovereignty has not changed much physically since the Travers, which moved his career record to six for nine. The Travers was Sovereignty’s third career Grade 1 victory and sixth stakes victory overall.
“He was looking pretty damn good then,” Mott said. “He was pretty well filled out at that point. He’s probably come a ways, but it’s difficult for me to see it because I see him every day. To me he looks great, but I thought he went into the Travers looking great. Actually, we went into the Travers and Breeders' Cup looking like he was gaining weight. He looked like he had a belly on him because he’s such a good doer. He eats really good and keeps himself in good fettle.”
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Oaklawn Handicap, Mott said, is how the race will unfold tactically because there isn’t a speed horse on paper. The field features more stalking and closer types.
“Looking at that race, we can talk about the way it looks on paper,” Mott said. “There’s no horse in there that has ‘1, 1, 1, 1’ beside his name. I don’t think there’s, like, any really, really fast early horse in there. Somebody’s going to see that and they’re going to do it.”
Mott was Oaklawn’s leading trainer in 1986 and won the Oaklawn Handicap in 1995 with future two-time Horse of the Year Cigar and again in 1996 with Geri. The Oaklawn Handicap was a Grade 1 race in 1995 and 1996. It’s a “Race for the Ages” in 2026.
“It’s been an important race for a long time,” Mott said. “It’s probably one of those races that’s lost its Grade 1 status but probably should have Grade 1 status.”
Godolphin won the Oaklawn Handicap in 2023 with Proxy and 2025 with First Mission.
