Hawthorne: Last Gunfighter extends campaign for Gold Cup

STICKNEY, Ill. – It is tempting to give in and essentially hand the Hawthorne Gold Cup to Last Gunfighter, who figures to be heavily favored in the biggest race of the Hawthorne fall-winter meet here Saturday.

Last Gunfighter is handled by the golden boy of the training ranks, Chad Brown, a 20 percent winner in graded stakes races. Last Gunfighter has had the best season of any horse in the Gold Cup, winning four stakes and $655,000. Four weeks ago, he rallied from last to finish fifth of 11 in a cracking edition of the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, and he clearly stays the Gold Cup’s 1 1/4 miles.
But it might not be that simple. Last Gunfighter, a 4-year-old, already has made seven starts during a campaign that began in January.

The original plan laid out by Brown and owner-breeder John Gunther was to give Last Gunfighter a winter break after the Breeders’ Cup.

“We went ahead and decided that would be his last start of the year, and he’d go to [Gunther’s] farm in Kentucky for a rest, but I flew him back to New York after the Breeders’ Cup to have a look at him, and he came out of the race so well, we decided he had one more in him,” Brown said.

And there’s the potential chink in Last Gunfighter’s armor. With Churchill’s Clark Handicap, a race in the same division, also going Saturday, Brown and Gunther reasoned that the Gold Cup, a Grade 2 race with a $350,000 purse, was a spot too good to pass. But this race was never a long-term goal for the horse, and post-Breeders’ Cup plans like this can turn tricky, even for a seemingly superior horse.

Eight others were entered in the race, which goes as the 8th on the card with a scheduled post time of 5:43 Central, but Prayer for Relief will run in the Clark instead, trainer Steve Asmussen said, leaving a likely field of eight. The track should be fast, and the temperature not too cold, with a high forecast in the low 40s. WGN television will broadcast the Gold Cup.

Last Gunfighter does his best work from off the pace, of which there might not be much in the Gold Cup. Suns Out Guns Out, exiting a mediocre performance in the Breeders’ Cup Marathon, might show some speed under the normally aggressive Cisco Torres, but Alpha is the horse most likely to make a beeline for the front end.

“We’re going to let him be forwardly placed, especially going a mile and a quarter,” trainer Kiaran McLaughlin said.

Alpha’s last two wins – the 2012 Travers and last summer’s Woodward – both came at Saratoga, but McLaughlin said he’s hopeful that Alpha can perform adequately over another track surface provided he gets in the right spot. Alpha also exits a Breeders’ Cup race, but unlike Last Gunfighter, he performed below his peak last time, finishing a distant eighth in the Dirt Mile.

“The last race was a complete throw-out,” McLaughlin said. “He stepped back right at the start, and it’s a non-effort, we feel like. We don’t think he’s had a hard year this year.”

Mister Marti Gras, who was fourth in the 2012 Gold Cup, is the most accomplished of the locally based contingent, but Fordubai might be the most dangerous Saturday. Fordubai has a win and two seconds from three starts on dry dirt tracks, and he has run well in all his main-track tries at Hawthorne.

This past spring, still green, Fordubai rallied for second in the Illinois Derby, and his last-start sixth-place finish in the Indiana Derby is not as modest as it looks on paper. Fordubai was moving up through a deep field but was steered inside and onto the worst part of a sloppy racetrack, flattening out in the stretch.

Fordubai’s trainer, Greg Geier, has a second Jim Tafel homebred, Street Spice, in the Gold Cup, but though Street Spice defeated Fordubai in an allowance race last winter, Geier has always held Fordubai in higher regard.

Derby Kitten will take some play based on his connections, owners Ken and Sarah Ramsey and trainer Mike Maker, but has done little on dirt throughout his career. Hattaash came close to winning the Washington Park on Polytrack this past summer, but the 6-year-old would need the race of his life to contend Saturday.