Arcadia, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Eclipse Award winner Shared Belief overcame his most difficult competition yet to win Saturday’s $300,000 Awesome Again Stakes at Santa Anita Park.<\/p>\n
Already secured of a spot in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the 3-year- old gelding won his second “Win and You’re In” race of the year heading to the 1 1\/4-mile Classic on Nov. 1.<\/p>\n
Co-owned and trained by Hall of Fame member Jerry Hollendorfer, Shared Belief was the 1-5 favorite in the seven-horse field for the 1 1\/8-mile stakes. Ridden by Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, the gelding was forced to race wide most of the race until the final turn.<\/p>\n
The champion ranged into contention from the outside coming out of the turn and drew even with 6-1 second pick Fed Biz entering the stretch. The two battled through the stretch until Shared Belief stuck his neck out for the victory.<\/p>\n
“They tried to use some tactics on me which made the win today even sweeter,” Smith said. “They just kept taking me wide, taking me wide, and I believe if you want to press the pace or take me out a little bit, OK. But doing it at all costs just to get me beat isn’t the way it should be done. It was to the extreme, I thought it was ridiculous. You just don’t do that.”<\/p>\n
Finishing third was Footbridge followed by Majestic Harbor, Imperative, Mystery Train and Sky Kingdom. Bird E House was a scratch.<\/p>\n
Shared Belief covered the Awesome Again in 1:48.58 on a fast track.<\/p>\n
“It’s not the worst thing in the world to have a tough race and be double-fit for the Breeders’ Cup. That race will be tougher so we’ll need to be tougher, too,” Hollendorfer said.<\/p>\n
Perfect in seven career starts, Shared Belief garnered $180,000 for the win to raise his bankroll to $1,552,200.<\/p>\n
Shared Belief missed the Triple Crown races and began his season with an allowance victory at Golden Gate Fields on May 26. He rolled to victory on July 5 in the Los Alamitos Derby and defeated older horses for the first time in Del Mar’s Pacific Classic on Aug. 24.<\/p>\n
As a 2-year-old in 2013, Shared Belief was perfect in three starts, including the Hollywood Prevue and CashCall Futurity, both at Hollywood Park.<\/p>\n
Shared Belief returned $2.40, $2.20 and $2.10. Fed Biz paid $3.60 and $3.20, and Footbridge paid $5.80 to show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arcadia, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Eclipse Award winner Shared Belief overcame his most difficult competition yet to win Saturday’s $300,000 Awesome Again Stakes at Santa Anita Park. Already secured of a spot in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the 3-year- old gelding won his second “Win and You’re In” race of the year heading to […]<\/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-23987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23987","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=23987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}