Hotshot Anna sets track record in Chicago Handicap

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Everyone said that when they saw Hugh Robertson in a suit Saturday at Arlington it was obvious Hotshot Anna was going to win the Grade 3 Chicago Handicap.

It’s true, Robertson isn’t the suit-wearing type, but the racetrack wags had it all wrong. His wife, Theresa, wanted to dine in a part of Arlington with a dress code. “Otherwise I would not have had a suit on,” Robertson said.

It came in handy, in any case.

Hotshot Anna hadn’t raced on Arlington’s Polytrack since a losing career debut two summers ago. Suffice it to say the surface suited her.

Under Arlington newcomer Harry Hernandez, Hotshot Anna pressed fractions of 22.80 and 45.08 seconds set by Marquee Miss, took over before the quarter pole without being asked, and proceeded to lay waste to her chasing rivals. Hotshot Anna drew off to a large lead through six furlongs in 1:08.67 and crossed the finish 5 3/4 lengths in front of runner-up Princess La Quinta. She stopped the timer in 1:20.93, a seven-furlong track record.

“She’s a good filly, a filly that runs hard every time,” said Robertson. “I wasn’t real surprised – I was surprised she won that easily.”

Princess La Quinta, the Arlington Matron winner over 1 1/8 miles last out, kept up admirably through the strong pace and stayed on well enough to get second.

“She ran beautiful. She likes that two-turn stuff better,” said trainer and part-owner Jim Gulick.

Union Strike, returning from a long layoff, stayed on decently for third while carrying top weight of 120 pounds.

“The filly in front, she never came back,” said jockey Corey Nakatani.

Hotshot Anna paid $11.60 to win while making her 9-2 odds look silly.

“She just took me the whole way,” said Hernandez, who had begun riding the Finger Lakes meet late this spring before making a last-minute decision to summer at Arlington. “She did everything so perfect. I looked back and I saw Sophie [Doyle on Princess La Quinta] right behind me, and I said, ‘I’m gonna wait for a little bit.’ When I asked her, she just blasted off. It felt good!”

Robertson hits the yearling sales and has made a small fortune over the years buying cheap and running out good money with auction bargains. The $20,000 he spent to acquire Hotshot Anna – a daughter of Trappe Shot and the Holy Bull mare, Avalos – for himself was, by his standards, a high-end purchase.

“I did like her quite a bit,” he said.

Hotshot Anna, Robertson said, got a poor ride in her lone previous Polytrack start and had trained lights out on the surface for the Chicago. The victory ran her career record to 5-5-1 from 16 starts, and a graded-stakes win on her resume considerably boosted the 4-year-old filly’s residual value.

And let the record show that her crusty owner and trainer took it all in wearing a quietly attractive summer suit.