Forced Entry Pulled Up in Santa Anita Oaks, Faces Further Testing

The name "Forced Entry" belongs to a horse, not a crime scene. It's worth stating plainly, because the Grade II, $200,000 Santa Anita Oaks on April 4 at Santa Anita Park produced the kind of abrupt, alarming exit that can send a filly's season spiraling. The 3-year-old bay Charlatan filly, trained by Hall of Fame conditioner Bob Baffert and owned by the "Three Amigos" partnership of Mike Pegram, Karl Watson, and Paul Weitman, was pulled up before even reaching the first turn, a dramatic early end for the race's second betting choice at 5-2 odds.

Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, riding Forced Entry for the first time after her regular pilot Juan Hernandez defected to board eventual winner Meaning, noticed something wrong almost immediately. "She broke really well, but she must have hit herself leaving the gate," Smith said. "She was real choppy and didn't feel comfortable." Forced Entry walked off the track under her own power, which offered the first measure of relief in what had been a tense few minutes for Baffert's barn.

Two days after the race, Baffert offered a measured but cautiously optimistic update. "So far she looks fine, but we're going to do diagnostics on her just in case," the trainer said. "I think she hit the bulb of her foot but there is no quarter grab." The diagnostic work is now underway as connections try to determine whether Forced Entry's Kentucky Oaks aspirations remain intact.

The stakes are considerable. Forced Entry entered the Santa Anita Oaks as the lone graded winner in the field, having won the Grade III, $101,000 Santa Ysabel Stakes on March 8 by 1¾ lengths. That victory had placed her ninth on the Kentucky Oaks points leaderboard with 50 qualifying points. Her career record stood at 3-2-0-0 with $102,500 in earnings when she walked into the gate at Arcadia. The Santa Anita Oaks distributes 100-50-25-15-10 points toward the May 1 Grade I Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs, and represented her clearest path toward the top of the standings.

The Three Amigos had already staked a strong claim to the Kentucky Oaks with Splendora, who was the points leader heading into the race. Pegram, Watson, and Weitman purchased Forced Entry for $375,000 at the 2024 Keeneland September Yearling Sale from the consignment of Stoneriggs Farm, the 600-acre Paris, Kentucky operation run by Florida real estate entrepreneur Robert Slack. Slack had originally acquired Forced Entry's dam, Violent Times, a stakes winner by Violence with $228,701 in career earnings, for $75,000 at the 2020 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale. Forced Entry's sire, Charlatan, stands at Hill 'n' Dale Farms for a 2026 stud fee of $25,000, and Baffert conditioned Charlatan himself before the horse entered stud.

The race went to Meaning, a Gun Runner filly trained by Michael McCarthy for Bridlewood Farm and Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, with Hernandez collecting the winning share of the purse. Baffert, for the first time in four years, failed to extend his streak of three consecutive Santa Anita Oaks victories: Faiza in 2023, Nothing Like You in 2024, and Tenma in 2025. Whether Forced Entry can recover in time to join Splendora at Churchill Downs on May 1 now depends entirely on what the diagnostics reveal.