O Besos has proven his class in races like the Kentucky Derby, the Breeders’ Cup Sprint and the Louisiana Derby. On Saturday the chestnut five-year-old will make his first start of the year, listed at 5-to-2 odds for the $125,000 Jeff Hall Memorial Stakes at Ellis Park.

Last November, O Besos came flying in the stretch in the $2-million Breeders’ Cup Sprint, rallying from last to finish fifth across the wire and he galloped out with the winner. A few weeks later he was entered in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct and was on the way to New York when word came that he would have to scratch because a horse at Churchill Downs, where he had been stabled, tested positive for equineherpes virus. O Besos wound up taking the winter off and has been his usual very aggressive self training up to a summer return.

Greg Foley trains O Besos, who finished third in the 2021 Louisiana Derby and was fifth across the wire in the Run for the Roses, later getting elevated to the fourth spot through the disqualification of the winner Medina Spirit.

O Besos Rockets Home at Churchill Downs

West Point campaigns O Besos in a racing partnership with Bernard Racing, Tagg Team Racing and Terry Stephens.

O Besos at Churchill Downs. Coady Photography