Amade takes Belmont Gold Cup in first U.S. start

ELMONT, New York – Amade’s the sort of horse you’d want along on a cross-country road trip. He relaxes easily, stays cool, and won’t turn a hair on a long-distance journey. Two miles, for instance, is as far as horses in North America run meaningful races. That’s like a stroll through the park for Amade, who flaunted his stamina – in a casual, low-key way – and won the Grade 2, $400,000 Belmont Gold Cup Invitational by a neck over favored Arklow early Friday evening.

“It’s like galloping for him; he could have gone around another time,” Chantilly-based trainer Alessandro Botti said through an interpreter. Botti, the well-known trainer Marco Botti’s first cousin, won the biggest race of his career with the first North American starter of his career.

Amade rated kindly Friday near the back of an eight-horse field under French expatriate jockey Flavien Prat as English shipper Mootasadir, after breaking last, was rushed up the inside to lead the Gold Cup into the first of three turns. The pace on a fast-playing turf course was slow, but that often doesn’t matter in these tests of stamina, and Prat seemed perfectly comfortable having only Highland Sky behind him during most of the race’s early and middle stages.

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Favored Arklow, trying a distance this long for the first time, raced in the second flight while stalking the pace two paths off the rail as the field made their first pass of the grandstand, but when Red Knight went wide into the clubhouse turn, Florent Geroux angled Arklow down to the fence to save ground. Several furlongs later, the pace still mild, Canessar and jockey Joel Rosario tried to sneak up into Arklow’s spot past the half-mile pole but Geroux tightened things up, forcing Canessar to be steadied back to sixth. Arklow slipped back into the pocket and there awaited racing room while nicely on the bridle cornering for home.

By that point, Prat had shaken his mount to life. Amade, like a real stayer, has no flashy burst of speed but asked to get going at the three-eighths pole jumped into the fray. As Mootasadir was swarmed under and Red Knight’s brief bid fizzled before the furlong grounds, Amade closed resolutely on the outside and hit the front. Arklow finally found room in upper stretch and once clear came with a good kick, but Amade was going better. Amade races in blinkers because he has a tendency to wander, and after making the lead he drifted toward the stands, but Prat corrected course and Amade simply came home stronger than Arklow through the last 100 of 3,200 meters.

“The winner was so far outside, my horse never really had a chance to see him,” said Geroux.

Arklow at the line had a length on third-place Highland Sky, who finished with decent energy and was a half-length better than hard-luck Canessar. Then came Red Knight, pace-pressing Raa Atoll, who wilted late, a tired Mootasadir, and the overmatched Noble Thought.

Hunter O’Riley was scratched by the stewards after it was determined he’d been administered a substance with medicine-like properties shortly before being led over from his stall for the race. No race-day treatment other than Lasix is permissible in New York.

Amade, by Casamento and out of the Five Star Day mare Sheba Five, was bred in Ireland but began his career in France for the Italian-born Botti racing 1 3/16 miles. He won for the first time over 1 1/2 miles, but even that was too short for this horse.

Since September 2018 Amade has raced at or about two miles six times, winning five of those starts and finishing a good enough second in the lucrative all-weather Marathon Championship on April 19 at Lingfield in England that OTI Racing purchased half the horse from original owners Laurent Dassault and Elisa Berte. It was after that race his connections hatched the plan to come to Belmont, Botti believing his horse would enjoy firm ground, and with his first graded stakes win Friday, Amade will come under consideration, Botti said, for the two-mile Melbourne Cup on Nov. 5 at Flemington Racecourse in Australia.

That’s a long way to travel, but the Melbourne Cup in 2018 offered a $5.11 million purse, and Amade, as he showed Friday, loves a true distance race even a great distance from home,