After 20 days unhit, pick six pays $116K

Some bettor somewhere was alive to The Lord's Facts in the final leg of the pick six on Saturday at Hawthorne. One can only hope, for their sanity, that they also had Doc Webster on the ticket.

The Lord's Facts was the 3-2 favorite in Saturday's 11th race, the cashing leg of the pick six, and in midstretch, she had a clear lead. But that lead quickly evaporated, and it was 7-2 Doc Webster who got home, ending a string of 20 days during which the Hawthorne pick six was not hit. By California and New York standards, the pool was decent, but hardly worth shouting about - but at Hawthorne, a $227,000 carryover, with another $358,000 bet into Saturday's pick six, qualified as enormous.

With Doc Webster home, there were four winning $2 tickets, each worth $116,913.20, which was not bad, considering the sequence was for the most part fairly predictable. Da Grizz won the opening leg at 5-2, and wound up being one of two winning pick-six favorites. Race 9 produced a dead heat between 7-2 Buds Bear and 5-1 Wedding Crasher, and there were three more 7-2 winners in the sequence. It was 18-1 Whatitsallabout, the winner of race 8, who blew the bet up.

Fogelsonger injured, heads home to Maryland

Jockey Ryan Fogelsonger re-injured his back when he was thrown from the back of the gate before the second race on Dec. 20, and has returned home to Maryland to recover from the injury, said his agent, Michelle Barsotti.

Fogelsonger moved his tack to Chicago just after the start of the Hawthorne meet and had a fairly successful run, winning 19 races before he was injured. He said in October that he planned to ride out the Hawthorne fall-winter meet, and hoped to return when racing resumed in March. But now, Fogelsonger's plans are uncertain, Barsotti said.

"He just needed some time to heal and then see where he's at," said Barsotti, who has moved on to Florida.

Return to sprint could help Karchie

Karchie could not carry his speed around two turns on Dec. 18, but back at a sprint trip in the nominally featured eighth race on Wednesday at Fair Grounds, Karchie might be the favorite in an entry-level Illinois-bred allowance.

Trained by Jamie Ness, who claimed Karchie on behalf of Sloppy Dice for just $5,000 on Nov. 9, Karchie won three straight races by open lengths during this Hawthorne meet. He led to the stretch call in his two-turn debut last time out, but gave way and wound up fifth. Karchie is likely to last longer going six furlongs on Wednesday, but the Hawthorne main track has not favored front-runners of late, and a closer like Y Chance could run down Karchie in the final furlong.

* Veteran 62-year-old trainer Ron Shenofsky has gotten out of the sport, at least temporarily, and probably permanently. Shenofsky sold all his horses this fall, and is out of the game more than 30 years after getting his trainer's license.