Veteran Liken It wins sloppy Kenny Cotton Memorial Stakes at Evangeline Downs
Nine-year-old Liken It handled a sloppy seven furlongs in 1:25.56 at Evangeline Downs, repeating in the Kenny Cotton Memorial and proving veteran form still travels.
Liken It turned the Kenny Cotton Memorial into a reminder that horse racing still has room for horses who know how to stay sound, stay in the fight and keep showing up. The 9-year-old gelding won the $50,000 stakes at Evangeline Downs on a sloppy strip in 1:25.56, finishing the seven furlongs with enough authority to beat a field built for Alabama-breds three and up. In a game obsessed with what is next, Liken It showed why what has already survived matters.
The race, run as Race 4 on the May 9 card and sent off at 6:58 p.m., fit him perfectly. Ridden by Devin H. Magnon and trained by Rylee Magnon, Liken It paid $9.40 to win, $5.80 to place and $3.40 to show while holding off Channelfortynine by 1 1/4 lengths. Wabash was another three-quarters of a length back in third, with Aoide 1 1/2 lengths farther away in fourth. The rest of the field finished Dromas, Wendy’s Ghost, Mr Rager, Can See Da Feet, Jovie G and Wendy’s Myla. The exacta returned $29.00, the trifecta paid $32.75 and the superfecta came back $60.53.
That is the part horseplayers should notice. Liken It was not just best on paper; he was the horse who handled the conditions when the track turned demanding and the pace pressure had to be survived, not merely matched. Bloodlines matter, and so does placement, but so does a horse’s ability to keep responding when the surface gets messy and the race shape gets honest. Liken It, a son of Doc N Bubba G, has now done that in the same stakes two years in a row, after winning the 2025 running as an 8-year-old in 1:24.24 over a faster track.
The repeat win gives the Kenny Cotton Memorial its own kind of identity. The 2026 edition drew 15 nominations and carried stakes conditions that made older horses concede weight, with 124 pounds assigned to the elder runners and an extra 2 pounds for stakes winners. Liken It still got the job done anyway, for owner Jason G. Grudzien and breeders Kent Gremmels and Lisa Gremmels. In a regional stakes landscape where many horses fade before they fully develop, a 9-year-old gelding still winning black-type races is not a novelty. It is a competitive advantage, and Evangeline Downs just saw it again.
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