At Laurel, many happy returns
Popular runners Barbadian Runner, Witty, Slewperstitus score
Frank Vespe
June 1, 2026
One way to know the racing season is in full swing: when three popular local runners all get their first wins of the year in a single weekend.
That was the case this past weekend at Laurel Park when Witty, Slewperstitus, and Barbadian Runner all earned their first wins of 2026.
Witty’s assault on the million-dollar earnings mark began in earnest Friday, when the seven-year-old Great Notion gelding won a 5 ½-furlong off-the-turf allowance/optional claimer by 1 ¼ lengths under jockey Jeiron Barbosa. Witty now has a dozen wins and nearly $950,000 in earnings from 35 career outings.
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“I was really sad that they came off the grass today, but he just wanted to run so badly,” said winning trainer, breeder, and co-owner Elizabeth Merryman. “So nice to get him going again.”
Witty is a five-time stakes winner on turf and a three-time stakes winner on dirt. Versatility is kinda his thing.
“He’s obviously a really nice dirt horse, and the one thing he hates about dirt is dirt in his face, and I figured it would be a small field, so he wouldn’t get that much dirt in his face,” Merryman said. “Barbosa did a nice job of just letting him drift to the outside and stay out of the dirt. Because he almost lost his eye as a three-year-old, so ever since then, I just try to keep that eye clean.”
Merryman said she would likely enter Witty in the Ben’s Cat Stakes at Laurel June 20 but did not expect him to make the field, as preference is granted to Maryland-breds and Virginia-breds first, and though he is by a Maryland sire, Witty is a Pennsylvania-bred. So the more likely landing spot, she said, is the Grade 2 Highlander at Woodbine June 27.
Last year’s Maryland Million Lassie winner, Slewperstitus, made her second start of 2026 a winning one Saturday in an allowance/optional claimer for sophomore fillies. Second to Rerun Table April 25, she turned the tables on that rival to win the 5 ½-furlong test by three parts of a length.
In addition to her Lassie win, Slewperstitus finished second or third in four other stakes during a busy two-year-old campaign. A Maryland-bred daughter of Great Notion, Slewperstitus is a homebred for Nancy and Eric Rizer. She has never been worse than third in eight career starts.
“I thought they ran a little slow early [in her season debut], and we just couldn’t run into that slow pace,” said winning trainer Robbie Bailes. “But she run big today, and John’s horse [Rerun Table] ran her eyeballs out, too. Those are two really nice fillies.”
Rerun Table, trained by John Salzman, Jr. for Bird and Grady LLC, has blossomed with the addition first of blinkers and then of Lasix. She has recorded three wins and two seconds in her last six outings.
Bailes and Eric Rizer said that the next stop for Slewperstitus would likely be at Colonial Downs. She ran in a pair of Virginia restricted stakes there last summer, finishing second in both, and the July 4 state-restricted Miss Disco for sophomore fillies may be a logical spot.
Barbadian Runner’s 2025 campaign was one for the record books: the now-four-year-old Barbados gelding won six times, all in stakes company, and earned more than $733,000. Which ain’t bad for a horse that cost $5,000 as a yearling, by a sire now standing for $1,000 in West Virginia.
“We were just hoping to get a decent Maryland-bred that would be competitive at any level,” trainer Henry Walters said last year. “You don’t expect a whole lot when you have modest money you’re spending.”
They – Walters and owner Scott Groh, who races as AJ Will Win Stables LLC – may not have been expecting a whole lot, but they got a whole lot.
In his season bow at Charles Town May 8, Barbadian Runner, off as the 3-5 favorite, fell victim to a pace-dictated upset. The Anthony Farrior-trained Petingas Twin, a stakes winner in his own right, was able to set dawdling fractions before sprinting home to hold off Barbadian Runner by a neck.
Farrior hoped for a repeat performance Saturday, as his Indy Charges On zipped to the front and set a leisurely tempo. But while Barbadian Runner had been at the back of the pack in the Charles Town race, this time regular rider Forest Boyce had him in closest attendance to the pace, never more than a length or two behind.
Barbadian Runner went to the attack in upper stretch, wore down Indy Charges On, and went on to win by five lengths for his eighth career win.
“He’s not a push-button horse where you ask him, and he takes off,” Walters said in a release. “He takes a little urging, and once he gets into a rhythm, he goes after them.”
Walters said Barbadian Runner’s next target would be the 1 1/8-mile, $100,000 Deputed Testamony Stakes June 27 at Laurel.
WHAT NEXT?
| HORSE | OWNER | TRAINER | MOST RECENT RACE | LIKELY NEXT RACE |
| Witty | Elizabeth M. Merryman and Marc Detampel | Elizabeth Merryman | Won allowance/optional claimer at Laurel | June 27 (G2 Highlander at Woodbine) |
| Slewperstitus | Eric Rizer | Robbie Bailes | Won allowance/optional claimer at Laurel | Colonial Downs |
| Barbadian Runner | AJ Will Win Stables LLC | Henry Walters | Won allowance/optional claimer at Laurel | June 27 (Deputed Testamony at Laurel) |
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