Ozone Park, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – Groupie Doll and Goldencents, fresh off victories in the 30th Breeders’ Cup, will face each other for the first time in Saturday’s $500,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct. A field of 11 has been drawn for the race.<\/p>\n
Because of incentives, the two Breeders’ Cup race winners will be competing for an enhanced purse of $1 million in the race while any previous Grade 1 winner competing in the Cigar Mile will race for a gross purse of $750,000.<\/p>\n
Groupie Doll, second to Stay Thirsty in last year’s Mile, is the 3-1 morning- line favorite over 7-2 second choice Goldencents. The 5-year-old mare, trained by Buff Bradley, will start from post 4 with Rajiv Maragh riding while Goldencents will be ridden by Rafael Bejarano from post 8.<\/p>\n
“She showed last year that she likes the track when she ran a huge race, and even though she was going to the sale, I felt like I could have thrown out the idea (of running in the Cigar Mile) to whoever might have bought her,” noted Bradley on Groupie Doll running Saturday. “It seemed like a sensible spot, and she’d be eligible for the $1 million purse because she’s a Breeders’ Cup winner.”<\/p>\n
Groupie Doll, who was bought by Mandy Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm, won her second straight Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint with Maragh in the saddle at Santa Anita on Nov. 2. Last year, she followed her Sprint victory with a second- place finish to Stay Thirsty in the Cigar, losing by a nose.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be one of her toughest tasks, but she has been training forwardly at Belmont, and all the signs are she’s going to run a big race,” said Bradley.<\/p>\n
The mare has earned $2,478,850 in 21 lifetime starts with 11 wins, four seconds and four thirds.<\/p>\n
Goldencents, trained by Doug O’Neill, set the entire pace in winning the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Santa Anita on Nov. 1.<\/p>\n
“He came out of the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in great shape,” O’Neill said about the 3-year-old colt. “In talking with the owners, it seems he can bounce right back in the Cigar Mile.”<\/p>\n
Partly owned by Rick Pitino, Goldencents won the Sham Stakes and Santa Anita Derby earlier this year with three straight second-place finishes in the Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien and Santa Anita Sprint Championship Stakes. In between, he was 17th in the Kentucky Derby and fifth in the Preakness.<\/p>\n
In 12 career starts he has five wins and four seconds for $1.99 million.<\/p>\n
Here is the complete Cigar Mile field in post position order: Praetereo, David Cohen, 30-1; Forty Tales, Joel Rosario, 10-1; Clearly Now, Jose Lezcano, 5-1; Groupie Doll, Rajiv Maragh, 3-1; Laugh Track, Mike Smith, 12-1; Capo Bastone, Irad Ortiz Jr., 20-1; Saratoga Snacks, Jose Ortiz, 12-1; Goldencents, Rafael Bejarano, 7-2; Flat Out, Junior Alvarado, 6-1; Verrazano, Javier Castellano, 8-1 and Private Zone, Martin Pedroza, 15-1.<\/p>\n
Post-time for the Mile will be approximately 3:20 p.m. (ET).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ozone Park, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – Groupie Doll and Goldencents, fresh off victories in the 30th Breeders’ Cup, will face each other for the first time in Saturday’s $500,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct. A field of 11 has been drawn for the race. Because of incentives, the two Breeders’ Cup race winners will be competing for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}