Oaklawn Park caps season with higher handle, purse gains, familiar leaders atop standings
Oaklawn finished with $430.2 million wagered and $54.5 million in purses, while Asmussen, Vazquez and Oxley again owned the top lines.
Oaklawn Park closed its 2025-26 season with the kind of numbers that tell you the product still has a pull in a crowded racing calendar: 627 races over 62 days, $430,167,353 in total handle and $54,477,160 in purses. The average daily handle climbed to $6,938,183 from $6,737,332 a year earlier, while the average daily purse rose to $878,663. On-track wagering totaled $27,723,037, and the average handle per race reached $686,072.
The bottom line is not just that Oaklawn paid more money. It also kept drawing a deep enough pool of horses to support it. The meet featured 1,968 individual starters, 5,527 total starts and an average of 8.81 starters per race, with 85 jockeys and 196 trainers taking part. Twelve trainers cleared $1 million in purse earnings, combining for $25,431,520, and 18 riders topped $1 million, up from 16 last season, with those jockeys banking $44,742,408.
At the top, though, the standings still belonged to familiar names. Steve Asmussen led the trainers with 62 wins and more than $5.3 million in earnings, and his operation also led owners by wins with 24. John Oxley topped the owner standings by earnings with more than $1.18 million. Ramon Vazquez claimed the riding title with 76 victories and nearly $4.3 million in purse money. Those are the kinds of repeat performances that can look like concentration on the surface, but Oaklawn’s broader numbers suggest something healthier: the meet is still producing enough volume and enough money for the same elite connections to excel without the card looking thin behind them.
The season also brought milestone moments for the track’s most durable players. Asmussen reached 1,000 career Oaklawn victories, Vazquez hit 500 and Ricardo Santana Jr. reached 800. For a meet that was sold in advance as larger and richer, with a record 62 stakes races, more than $18.3 million in stakes purses, a $1 million Fantasy Stakes and a $750,000 Honeybee Stakes, the final ledger matched the pitch.
Louis A. Cella called the season remarkable, and the numbers back him up. Oaklawn did not just lean on star names to carry the meet; it paired those familiar winners with higher wagering, stronger purse distribution and a wider winning bench than its reputation sometimes gets credit for. That is how a regional track stays relevant: not by changing its identity, but by making the identity pay.
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