Hawthorne: Haattash will have fitness tested in Sunday feature
STICKNEY, Ill. – The fifth race at Hawthorne on Sunday is not just the featured event on the card; it’s the best race run so far this year in Chicago.
The Sunday feature drew seven runners, including a coupled entry from the Cheryl Winebaugh barn. Carded for 1 1/16 miles on dirt, the race has a Russian novel’s worth of allowance conditions and also is open to $50,000 claimers, and it attracted a diverse, talented cast.
The Winebaugh-trained, Kenneth Fishbein-owned coupled entry consists of Francois, who had a good 2013 campaign, and Hattaash, who had an even better one.
Hattaash, who is from the same female family as Rachel Alexandra, started his campaign about this time last year winning a $25,000 claimer at Hawthorne, but he wound up a listed-stakes-class performer by the time his season wound down. Charlie Bettis, who died early last summer, trained Hattaash until his untimely passing, and he had moved Hattaash up to the $80,000 claiming class by the time Winebaugh took over the Bettis stable during the Arlington meet. Hattaash came within a neck of winning the Grade 3 Washington Park Handicap there in August, won a high-end optional claimer in October at Hawthorne, and was not embarrassed when beaten less than eight lengths in the Grade 2 Hawthorne Gold Cup, his 2013 finale.
Hattaash has gotten in three works preparing for his 2014 debut, and as with the other four horses in the field that spent the winter in unusually cold and snowy Chicago, it’s fair to question Hattaash’s fitness level. That group includes Hope for Today, though he has logged one more published work than Hattaash, and Hope for Today, despite an outside draw, could prove to be the race’s controlling speed.
Mavericking, who raced twice at the Oaklawn meet for trainer Roger Brueggemann, and O T B Bob, who comes off a second-level optional-claiming win at Tampa Bay for trainer Jim DiVito, are the two entrants with the advantage of a recent start, but in both cases, that is the only significant edge they appear to hold.
Flathead River came strongly to hand last fall, and is an interesting prospect for the Illinois-bred two-turn stakes division this year, but his winter work pattern is especially light, and this comeback run probably is only a means to an end. That could also prove the case with No Apologizes, a Chris Block-trained stablemate of Hope for Today who does his best work in the homestretch and might not get the fast pace he needs to be most effective on Sunday.