After beginning the month by winning the $1.5 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint aboard Work All Week, jockey Florent Geroux ended the month by winning the Grade II $250,000 Hawthorne Gold Cup with New York invader Red Rifle.
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“Today was something special for me,” Geroux said after Saturday’s 21/4-length triumph in the 78th running of the Gold Cup. “I’m super happy to win here. I used to ride here every day. This is where I learned to be a better jockey, and this is their signature race.”
The purse money isn’t the only significant dissimilarity between the Sprint and the main event of Hawthorne Race Course’s fall meeting. The former is a 6-furlong race, while the latter is run at 11/4 miles, so tactically they posed completely different problems for Geroux. Complicating his task was he had never ridden Red Rifle.
Red Rifle’s renowned trainer, Todd Pletcher, didn’t accompany the 4-year-old gelding to Hawthorne but gave Geroux a game plan: “Just break sharp. If he makes the lead that’s fine. If somebody wants the lead, just sit off the pace.”
Nobody wanted the lead. Red Rifle shot out of the starting gate and proceeded to dictate the pace, which was relatively slow. With a quarter of a mile to run, the son of the esteemed sire Giants Causeway and maternal grandson of the national champion sprinter Gulch was leading by 11/2 lengths. Then came a sudden burst of speed, and by the stretch call he had widened his lead to 31/2 lengths.
That lead proved to be insurmountable.
Mister Marti Gras, who’d spent the opening three quarters 10th in the field of 11, made a powerful stretch run and was the Gold Cup runner-up for the second straight year.
“The winner sprinted away turning for home,” said Mister Marti Gras’ rider, Tim Thornton. “I wasn’t able to run him down.”
Another late mover, Effinex, was third, a head shy of Mister Marti Gras. The ninth-place finisher was the 3-1 favorite Cary Street.
“Everything went wrong for him,” said Cary Street’s jockey, Miguel Mena. “We had a couple of issues in the starting gate. The gate guy (assistant starter) grabbed my horse’s ear. He got mad and reared. Then, his bit broke and they had to take it off.”
Red Rifle was the fifth betting choice at 6-1 and he kicked back mutuel returns of $14.80, $7.60 and $4.80 after going the distance in 2 minutes, 3.24 seconds.
The triumph was the third in nine starts this year for Red Rifle, who made the transition to dirt after running on the grass in his four previous starts at Belmont, Saratoga and Keeneland. He won one of those races and was a close second in the other three.