ICYMI: Asmussen earns 1,000th Oaklawn race with son Erik aboard
Oaklawn Park media notes by Robert Yates (Coady Media photo above of Duke of Duval winning an Ellis Park allowance race under trainer Steve Asmussen’s oldest son, Keith. Duke of Duval gave Asmussen his 1,000th Oaklawn Park victory under his youngest son, 2024 champion Eclipse Award apprentice jockey Erik)
Oaklawn Park, as we mentioned, could almost be Kentucky West and as such much of Robert Yates’ Oaklawn media notes include Kentucky horsemen, including below:
Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen joked before Oaklawn’s 64-day split season began Dec. 12 that it would be February before he reached his latest career milestone in Hot Springs because of a pedestrian start.
Asmussen didn’t have to wait nearly that long, scoring his record-extending 1,000thOaklawn victory when Mike Rutherford’s favored Duke of Duval ($6.80) won Sunday’s fourth race, a $117,000 allowance, under Erik Asmussen, the trainer’s youngest son. Duke of Duval won a maiden and first-level allowance at Ellis Park over the summer.
Steve Asmussen entered Oaklawn’s 2025-2026 meeting with 993 career victories. He hit 1,000 on the ninth day of racing.
“Great significance,” Asmussen, 60, said moments after the victory. “Think about it a lot, just the fact that I grew up with my mom training and my dad riding. We’ve always been like this. When my brother turned 16, he started riding for my mom. My first winners were ridden by my brother and my dad. Thirty years later, this is where we’re at.”
Asmussen, who is North America’s all-time winningest trainer, had already reached 1,000 career victories at four tracks. Asmussen has 1,666 victories at Lone Star Park, 1,375 at Remington Park, 1,173 at Fair Grounds and 1,032 at Sam Houston Race Park, according to Equibase, racing’s official data gathering organization. He’ll come into Churchill Downs’ 2026 spring meet with a record 992 victories.
Asmussen started his first horse at Oaklawn in 1989 and recorded his first winner in Hot Springs Feb. 9, 1996 (Honest J). The following day, Asmussen won the $50,000 Mountain Valley Stakes at Oaklawn with Valid Expectations, who would become the trainer’s first nationally prominent runner.
Asmussen owns every major Oaklawn training record, including career purse earnings ($64.4 million), career stakes victories (123), single-season purse earnings ($6,685,459 in 2023-2024) and single-season stakes victories (11 in 2023-2024). Asmussen equaled the late Cole Norman’s single-season Oaklawn record for victories (71) in 2023-2024.
“Oaklawn, what a level of racing,” Asmussen said.
Asmussen won 46 races last season at Oaklawn enroute to his record-extending 14th meet title. Asmussen was also Oaklawn’s leading trainer in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2021-2022.
Asmussen (868) surpassed the late Bob Holthus to become Oaklawn’s all-time winningest trainer when Red Route One captured the $200,000 Bathhouse Row Stakes April 22, 2023.
Asmussen and Erik Asmussen teamed for the trainer’s meet-high eighth victory, and 1,001st overall, in Sunday’s sixth race with While I ($11).
Erik Asmussen was North America’s champion apprentice jockey of 2024. Cash Asmussen, Steve Asmussen’s older brother, won the award in 1979. Steve Asmussen’s oldest son, Keith Asmussen, is also a jockey and recorded his biggest career victory to date in the $500,000 Essex Handicap (G3) aboard Red Route One for his father last March at Oaklawn.
Steve Asmussen’s parents, Keith and Marilyn, run El Primero Training Center near Laredo, Texas.
Steve Asmussen became the first trainer to reach 10,000 career North American victories when he saddled Bet He’s Ready to win the fifth race Feb. 20, 2023, at Oaklawn.
Asmussen entered Wednesday with 11,084 career North American victories, according to Equibase. A former jockey, Asmussen saddled his first career winner July 19, 1986, at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico.
Cella, Lukas Selected to Arkansas Sports HOF
A year after hosting the induction ceremony for the first time, two of the most prominent figures in Oaklawn history, executive Louis Cella and the late trainer D. Wayne Lukas, will be part of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame’s 2026 class, the ASHOF’s 68th overall.
“How about that?” Cella said. “That was a little shot out of the dark that surprised me, but I was very honored. A little bit over my skis. But when you’re in a category with D. Wayne Lukas, you have to check your pulse and see what the hell is going on.”
Cella has been Oaklawn’s president since December 2017, succeeding his father, Charles Cella, who died earlier that month. Under Louis Cella’s leadership, Oaklawn has become a tourist, entertainment and racing destination after completing a reported $100 million expansion in 2021, highlighted by a 198-room luxury resort hotel that overlooks the track’s first turn and 1,500-seat event center. Additional space for full-fledged casino gaming has pushed Oaklawn’s average daily purse distribution to more than $900,000, highest of any winter track.
Oaklawn has been owned by the Cella family for more than 100 years. Charles Cella, who became Oaklawn’s president in 1968, was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.
Lukas was an industry giant.
A 1999 inductee into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Lukas amassed 4,953 career Thoroughbred victories (the ninth-highest total in North American history), including 15 Triple Crown events. Lukas, a one-time basketball coach, was Oaklawn’s leading trainer in 1987 and 2011 and is its eighth-winningest trainer in history with 384 victories, the last coming a little more than two months before his death June 28. He was 89.
Oaklawn will honor Lukas’ memory with Friday’s inaugural $135,000 “The Coach” Overnight Stakes for 4-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles.
The ASHOF induction ceremony had been held at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock, Ark., before Oaklawn wrestled the event away in 2025. Cella said he was recently informed of his selection by Steven Riffle, the ASHOF’s new executive director.
“It was fun when I got the call from the executive director,” Cella said. “I said: ‘I’ve been to about 10 of these, but I’ve never been to one at Oaklawn because we started it last year.’ He started laughing and said: ‘I’ve never been to one, either, because I just started three months ago.’”
The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony is April 10 in the Oaklawn Event Center.
Finish Lines
Oaklawn’s 51-day Classic racing season runs Jan. 30-May 2. … Eight-time Oaklawn riding champion Ricardo Santana Jr., a long-time Kentucky mainstay who more recently has been based in New York, recorded his 799thcareer Oaklawn victory aboard Foie Gras ($26.20) in Sunday’s inaugural $135,000 Oaklawn Anywhere Overnight Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at six furlongs. Santana is the fourth-winningest rider in Oaklawn history. … Jockey Cristian Torres rode two winners Sunday, pushing his career Oaklawn total to 298. Torres won the fifth race aboard Rocketeightyeight ($21.40) for trainer Abel Ramirez-Rodriguez and the 10th race aboard Street Painter ($41.40) for trainer Aaron Shorter. Torres is a two-time Oaklawn riding champion. … Through the first nine days of the 64-day split season, 46 claims totaled $1,031,000, according to Oaklawn.
