Golden Dome Stable's Spruce Run, the seven-year-old senior member of the field, justified trainer Linda Rice's decision to ship him to Chicago when he got up for a hard fought neck victory over favored Fort Prado Saturday in the $150,000 Robert F. Carey Memorial Handicap (G3).

Old Deuteronomy took the lead in the one-mile turf contest run over a course labeled as good. He was able to set comfortable fractions of :24.46 and :49.23, with Wimplestiltskin and Spruce Run tracking him as he hit six furlongs in 1:14.47. Down the stretch Fort Prado, last in the field of nine in the early going, came charging between horses to take a brief lead before Spruce Run rallied to just nip the favorite. With jockey Rex Stokes III in the irons, Spruce Run crossed the finish line in 1:39.97.

Spruce Run has always been competitive in stakes all over the Eastern seaboard, but a graded victory eluded him. This year he failed to hit the board in the Appleton Handicap (G3) on February 12, but subsequently finished second, beaten just a neck, in the Red Bank Handicap (G3) at Monmouth Park. After finishing off the board at Monmouth in the United Nations Stakes (G1) on July 2 and the Oceanport Stakes (G3) on August 7, Rice took him to Mountaineer Race Track where he scored a two-length victory in the September 5 Labor Day Stakes as a prep for his trip to Hawthorne.

Bred in Kentucky by Marsetta, Spruce Run's first graded stakes win added $90,000 to his bankroll, which now stands at $540,698 with nine wins from 45 starts. He is out of the Big Spruce mare Spruce Luck.

See chart, courtesy of Equibase at http://www.equibase.com