Stickney, IL (SportsNetwork.com) – Red Rifle, ridden by Florent Geroux, went wire to wire versus 10 other distance runners to capture Saturday’s $250,000 Hawthorne Gold Cup at Hawthorne.Race Course.<\/p>\n
Saddled by Todd Pletcher, Red Rifle had the lead as the field went under the wire for the first time in the 1 1\/4-mile Gold Cup. He was stalked by Midnight Aria, Abraham and 70-1 longshot Hattaash.<\/p>\n
Red Rifle, sent off at 6-1, controlled the pace throughout the 1 1\/4 miles and registered a 2 1\/2-length win over a late running Mister Marti Gras, last year’s runner-up as well. Finishing third was 22-1 longshot Call Me George with 3-1 co-favorite Effinex in fourth.<\/p>\n
The time for the Gold Cup was 2:03.24 on a fast track.<\/p>\n
Red Rifle, owned by Twin Creeks Racing, added $150,000 to his bankroll. The 4-year-old chestnut gelding has won five of 13 career starts for $412,520.<\/p>\n
Red Rifle began 2014 with a second in an allowance race at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 17 and came back to capture the Maxxam Gold Cup at Sam Houston on March 1.<\/p>\n
The 4-year-old finished ninth in Keeneland’s Ben Ali and fourth in the Westchester at Belmont Park. Moving to the turf, Red Rifle ran second in a pair of allowance races at Belmont and Saratoga, and won the Yankee Affair at Belmont on Sept. 6 before running second in the Sycamore at Keeneland on Oct. 16.<\/p>\n
Red Rifle paid $14.80, $7.60 and $4.80. Mister Marti Gras returned $5.60 and $3.80, and Call Me George paid $10.20 to show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stickney, IL (SportsNetwork.com) – Red Rifle, ridden by Florent Geroux, went wire to wire versus 10 other distance runners to capture Saturday’s $250,000 Hawthorne Gold Cup at Hawthorne.Race Course. Saddled by Todd Pletcher, Red Rifle had the lead as the field went under the wire for the first time in the 1 1\/4-mile Gold Cup. […]<\/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-26509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26509","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=26509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}