Sacramento, CA — A pair of $20,000 Sire Stakes for the 4-year-olds highlight the Sunday (April 9) Cal Expo program, with Divine Art and Give Me This Dance renewing their rivalry among the distaffers while Worthy Opponent and JP Jetty are the major players in the male division.

Watch and Wager LLC will present 11 races Sunday with first post set for 5 p.m.

Divine Art is a 4-year-old daughter of Outrageous Art who is owned, trained and driven by Gerry Longo and is eyeing her third straight stakes trophy at this meeting. She came into this stand with a 12-race winning streak in tow and added five more tallies before being upset by archrival Give Me This Dance in the first Sire Stakes meeting on Feb. 19.

Since that setback, Divine Art has captured three of her four trips to the post, including a pair of stakes decisions. In last week’s outing, she carved out all the pace and fought back to prevail by a neck over a first-over Give Me This Dance.

Worthy Opponent comes into this assignment having posed for pictures following 10 of his 21 lifetime appearances for owner/breeder Wayne Knittel and trainer Bob Johnson. Luke Plano will guide again.

Worthy Opponent earned multiple stakes trophies last year but was picking up his first Sire Stakes win this season when he proved a punctual 1-5 favorite in last week’s top dance for the division. Plano was able to get away with some very moderate fractions, then came a :57 back half to get the job done by three-quarters of a length over JP Jetty.

Allmyx’sliventexas, Worthy Opponent have Johnson smiling

Bob Johnson was posing for pictures with two of the best in the barn last week as Allmyx’sliventexas dead-headed in a division of the Open Pace and Worthy Opponent added another stakes trophy to his resume.

Allmyx’sliventexas and Worthy Opponent race for Wayne Knittel, who bred both performers with his late brother Rod. Allmyx’sliventexas won for the 60th time in his career while Worthy Opponent has clicked in 10 of his 21 starts, with multiple stakes scores.

“They’re both by Hi Ho Silverheel’s, but they’re not the same,” Johnson noted. “Allmyx’sliventntexas is just as tough as they come and he would certainly rank right there with the best horses I’ve ever had.

“He can get it done from any position. He’s tough on the lead, he’s very dangerous when he’s tracking and he can came with a real nice finish if that’s the way the race comes up. He may have lost a step at age 10, but he still loves it out there.

“As far as Worthy Opponent goes, he’s got a lot of ability but he prefers to come from off the pace and doesn’t really like a fight up front. He won last week on the lead, but he got away with a slow half.”

The goal for Worthy Opponent is to take down the $50,000 Sire Stakes championship at the end of the month, and right now he looks as solid as anyone in the division off his most recent miles.

After this stand, Johnson related that Allmyx’sliventexas will get the summer off while Worthy Opponent will be among his troops headed to Minnesota for the Running Aces meet.