Eleven line up for meet's lone graded stakes in Gold Cup

STICKNEY, Ill. – An eclectic field of 11 older horses will compete in Saturday’s Grade 2, $250,000 Hawthorne Gold Cup, the lone graded stakes still contested at Hawthorne’s fall-winter meeting.

The Gold Cup used to have a purse twice as large and was contested in October as a nominal prep for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, but Hawthorne, bowing to the realities of national trends, as well as its own purse structure, moved the Gold Cup to a month after the BC Classic last year, and the purse has been trimmed to fit available prize money at this meet.

The race goes up against the Grade 1 Clark at Churchill on Friday but still managed to attract an appealing field. From the rail out, with riders, the entrants are Abraham (Joe Rocco Jr.), Hattaash (Sheldon Russell), Red Rifle (Florent Geroux), Carey Street (Miguel Mena), Ever Rider (Frankie Pennington), Effinex (Angel Arroyo), Street Spice (Edgar Perez), Call Me George (Manny Esquivel), Fordubai (Israel Ocampo), Mister Marti Gras (Tim Thornton), and Midnight Aria (Julio Felix).

The Gold Cup, a 1 1/4-mile dirt race, is carded as the eighth of nine races Saturday, with post time scheduled for 5:20 p.m. Central. The forecast is for dry conditions and much warmer temperatures than the area recently has experienced, with a high in the low 50s.