Saratoga Springs, NY (Sports Network) – Lightly raced Cross Traffic set the pace and held off a challenge down the stretch to win Saturday’s $750,000 Whitney Invitational Handicap at Saratoga Race Course.<\/p>\n
Part of the Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” program, the victory in the 1 1\/8-mile Whitney guarantees a place for Cross Traffic in this November’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita.<\/p>\n
Trained by Todd Pletcher and ridden by John Velazquez, Cross Traffic took the lead in the eight-horse field shortly after the start and set the pace the entire distance. Defending winner and 6-5 favorite Fort Larned was racing just behind the leader with Mucho Macho Man also pressing the pace.<\/p>\n
Around the final turn, Cross Traffic, Mucho Macho Man and Fort Larned were across the track. Entering the stretch, Cross Traffic moved to the lead as his challengers tired.<\/p>\n
The 7-2 second choice staggered a bit down the stretch, but was able to post a three-quarter length win over the late running Successful Dan. Mucho Macho Man finished third followed by Ron the Greek, Fort Larned, Alpha, Csaba and Fast Falcon.<\/p>\n
Cross Traffic covered the Whitney on a fast track in 1:47.89.<\/p>\n
Cross Traffic, owned by GoldMark Farm, recorded his first stakes win in just his fifth career start. The victory was worth $450,000 to bring his lifetime earnings to $681,300 with three wins and two seconds.<\/p>\n
Making his debut in January of this year, the 4-year-old colt won his first two races at Gulfstream Park and followed with second-place performances at Belmont Park in the Westchester Handicap and Met Mile.<\/p>\n
Cross Traffic returned $9.10, $5.40 and $4.40. Successful Dan paid $5.90 and $4.90, and Mucho Macho Man paid $5.20 to show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saratoga Springs, NY (Sports Network) – Lightly raced Cross Traffic set the pace and held off a challenge down the stretch to win Saturday’s $750,000 Whitney Invitational Handicap at Saratoga Race Course. Part of the Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” program, the victory in the 1 1\/8-mile Whitney guarantees a place for Cross Traffic […]<\/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-9639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639","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=9639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9676,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions\/9676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}