Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Apr. 20, 2026

Jason discusses big showdown events in light of this past weekend's Oaklawn H. (G2). 

A good Monday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a good weekend and got to enjoy the big showdown at Oaklawn this past weekend. This felt like one of the bigger “showdowns” we’ve had in a non-Derby or Breeders’ Cup race in quite a while. I mean I suppose the Travers (G1) and races like that often lead to big matchups, but the Oaklawn H. (G2) this past weekend felt like one of the bigger ones we’ve had in a while. 

You can certainly argue that both Journalism and Sovereignty were making their first starts as four-year-olds, and first starts off pretty long layoffs, when beaten by White Abarrio. Maybe both needed the race, and their ultimate goals might be further down the line. But just having three top older horses decide to battle it out in a race on an otherwise quiet April weekend is kind of awesome. 

We’ve all lamented over the last many years about how quickly our stars are whisked away to stud duty before they can actually develop into older horses. And it’s a major issue that is always very frustrating. But it was pretty neat to get to see three bona fide stars match up in an Arkansas starting gate. 

Since the turn of the century, the biggest matchup that never materialized that I can remember was Zenyatta versus Rachel Alexandra. The number of conversations that were given to that matchup that never materialized is crazy.  But we wanted to see it, and to this day and forever it will remain just a hypothetical. 

One showdown that we did get to see on the track, and kind of in a random race, was Shared Belief and California Chrome. The San Antonio S. (G2) at Santa Anita ended up being the race that both superstars showed up in, and the purse was $500,000 so I wonder if maybe the purse was juiced up a touch in order to get them both to show up.

I still remember Trevor Denman exclaiming, “Here’s the race we’ve been waiting for!” as they came into the stretch. Shared Belief ultimately wore Chrome down late and got the win. Hoppertunity was actually in a photo for third in that race, and of course he was no slouch himself.  

Horse racing is meant to be conducted on a racetrack. Seeing so many people simply buying horses hoping to win a couple big races by age three and then whisk them off to retirement is so weak in my opinion. I understand wanting to cash in, but our game is worse off because of things like that. 

We’re better off when we have good horses hooking up in races like we had on Saturday. It meant something. People were excited and we were treated to a big race. Kudos to all the connections and to Oaklawn, and of course, to White Abarrio for winning. 

Have a great week everyone!