NEWS
Super Frolic takes Hawthorne Gold Cup in slop; Perfect Drift fourth
Posted: Saturday, September 24, 2005
Millennium Farms's Super Frolic took to the sloppy track at Hawthorne Race Courseon Saturday and scored a head victory over a determined Lord of the Game in the $750,000 Hawthorne Gold Cup Stakes (G2).Lord of the Game went right to the front in the 1 1/4-mile race for three-year-olds and older, but entering the backstretch Desert Boom came up to take a slim lead while Super Frolic tracked the dueling rivals in third.
The trio entered the stretch in the same order before Super Frolic and jockey Victor Espinoza began a sustained drive on the outside to nip runner-up Lord of the Game in the finals strides, finishing in 2:04.66.
Desert Boom weakened nearing the wire but held on for third, 2 1/2 lengths behind Lord of the Game.
Favored at 4-to-5 in the Gold Cup was Stonecrest Farm's multi-millionaire Perfect Drift, who won the 2003 Gold Cup and finished second in last year's running to Freefourinternet. Perfect Drift appeared to be in good striking position rounding the turn but was unable to close ground in the stretch, finishing fourth.
Freefourinternet could not repeat his winning performance, never seriously threatening on the way to a ninth-place finish in the field of ten.
Millennium Farms acquired the five-year-old son of Pine Bluff after the chestnut horse's third-place finish in the R. R. M. Carpenter Jr. Memorial Handicap at Delaware Park on July 16 and moved him to trainer Vladimir Cerin's barn at Del Mar. Super Frolic finished fifth in the Pacific Classic Stakes (G1) on August 21 before Cerin shipped him to Hawthorne for the Gold Cup.
Super Frolic's boosted his career earnings to $848,854 and improved to 11 wins in 31 starts.
Bred in Kentucky by Cherokee Farms, he is out of the Mt. Livermore mare Lindsay Frolic.
See chart, courtesy of Equibase at
http://www.equibase.com
