Effinex invades for shot at Hawthorne Gold Cup

STICKNEY, Ill. – Jimmy Jerkens has been training since 1997, before which he served 20 years as an assistant to his father, Hall of Famer Allen Jerkens. During that span, neither Jerkens has run a horse at Hawthorne, which makes one suspect Effinex has come to Chicago for good reason.

New York-bred Effinex is among 11 entrants in a textured edition of the Grade 2, $250,000 Hawthorne Gold Cup, a 1 1/4-mile dirt race that given the long homestretch at Hawthorne, plays even longer than its raw distance. That’s a plus for the tepid morning-line favorites in the race, Cary Street and Ever Rider.

Cary Street exits a 9 1/4-length win in the Las Vegas Marathon, while Ever Rider was a half-length winner last out in the Temperence Hill Invitational, a race in which Cary Street was third. The pair met Sept. 1 at Parx, where Cary Street won the 1 1/2-mile Greenwood Cup by a length over Ever Rider.

The two marathon specialists and Effinex should benefit from a legitimate pace – Abraham, Red Rifle, Call Me George, and Midnight Aria all race forwardly placed. Todd Pletcher, Red Rifle’s trainer, won the 2008 Gold Cup with Fairbanks.

Also in the race is Gold Cup stalwart Mister Marti Gras, who was fourth in the 2011 and 2012 runnings and second last year. Street Spice, one of two entrants for trainer Greg Geier, along with Fordubai, was third in the 2013 Gold Cup. But this year’s race looks deeper.

The Gold Cup has a post time of 5:20 p.m. Central and goes as race 8 on a nine-race card with a first post of 1:50 p.m. The track should be fast and the high temperature a relatively balmy 50.

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Key contenders

Effinex (Last 3 Beyers: 96-75-83)

* Jerkens has trained Effinex for only three starts. In the Empire Classic, he raced Effinex in blinkers for the first time. The result was dramatic, with Effinex running the race of his life, winning at odds of 17-1. Jerkens told Daily Racing Form that when he first breezed Effinex in blinkers, “he looked like a different horse.”

* Effinex makes his first start beyond nine furlongs but is a grinding, come-forward sort of horse who should not be troubled by the distance.

* He has worked four times since the Empire Classic, and the last of those drills, a half-mile in 48 seconds, was the fastest of 143 such works Nov. 23 at Belmont.

Cary Street (Last 3 Beyers: 96-83-96)

* If anything, the 10 furlongs of the Gold Cup is on the short side for a true 1 1/2-mile horse.

“It’s the only thing I would be concerned with him,” said trainer Brendan Walsh.

* Walsh said he planned to give Cary Street the winter off after his Oct. 31 win in California, but the horse had other ideas.

“I was going to shut him down, but he came out of the race so good, I thought, ‘I can’t send this horse out right now,’ ” said Walsh.

* Cary Street got a dream setup in the Marathon, in which the early leaders went a suicidal pace.

“If I had paid them, they couldn’t have set it up better,” Walsh said.

Ever Rider (Last 3 Beyers: 94-95-93)

* Has two wins and a second since moving into the Parx-based barn of trainer Mary Montoya.

* His good last-start win at Belmont came at 1 5/8 miles, but Montoya thinks the shorter Gold Cup distance might better suit the horse.

* Ever Rider also might have run in the Las Vegas Marathon, but instead was aimed at the Gold Cup.

“We gave him the extra time to have him fresh,” Montoya said. “This was a race we had targeted.”