Lucky Lindy gets a rest after Hawthorne Derby win

STICKNEY, Ill. – Lucky Lindy came out of his victory Saturday in the Grade 3, $150,000 Hawthorne Derby in good condition but is almost certainly done racing until 2016, trainer Mark Frostad said Monday.

Scoring back-to-back victories for the first time in his career, Lucky Lindy appeared to deliver a peak performance in winning the nine-furlong grass race by 2 1/4 lengths, and his 93 Beyer Speed Figure was a lifetime best. Rallying into a fast, contested pace, Lucky Lindy rolled home on the outside under Robby Albarado to follow up on his win in the Ontario Derby at Woodbine, where Lucky Lindy has been based most of this year.

“It’s getting pretty late in the year, and hopefully he’s got a big year ahead of him next year,” said Frostad. “He’s done a lot this season and finished it off in style.”

Lucky Lindy, a George Strawbridge homebred by Harlan’s Holiday, made one start last year at 2, and according to his trainer, he then had to deal with bruising to his lower leg bones late in the year.

“We had to give him quite a bit of time, and it took a while to get him to perform at his best this year, but he’s done really well,” Frostad said.

Richies Sweetheart vulnerable

Richies Sweetheart has put together easily the best 2015 campaign of any horse in the featured seventh race Wednesday at Hawthorne. She’s quickest into stride and figures to outrun the other pace players for the lead, and she has recorded the highest Beyer figures in the field.

Counterintuitively, all of this is to say that Richies Sweetheart absolutely does not have to win the Wednesday feature.

Bettors unwilling to take a short price will note that Richies Sweetheart runs back just 12 days after fading to sixth after getting hooked on the lead and cooked in the $100,000 Buffalo Trace Franklin County Stakes at Keeneland. The Buffalo Trace is a grass race over 5 1/2 furlongs, and short turf sprints are Richies Sweetheart’s specialty. She’s all right on dirt and can get six furlongs – the Wednesday feature’s distance – in the right spot, but one wonders why Richies Sweetheart, who has banked more than $200,000 this year alone, is coming back on short rest for a purse of about $30,000, including supplements for Illinois-breds such as Richies Sweetheart.

Richies Sweetheart won an open, high-end dirt-sprint allowance at about this time last year at Hawthorne, but her odds were 5-2 that day, and on Wednesday, they might sink closer to 3-5, a price at which she missed the board in her second start of the 2014 Hawthorne fall-winter meeting.

Owner Bill Stiritz and trainer Scott Becker have two entrants for the race, which is no surprise since their outfit is better stocked with older dirt-allowance horses than any other on the circuit. Win’em All might be in for a tough trip from the rail, but St. Louis City has mild upset potential.

Summer Again, drawn widest in a seven-horse field, also has a chance. Though 6, she’s gotten limited chances in dirt sprints and has run well in most of them. She doesn’t have the speed of Richies Sweetheart but can get a clean, pace-tracking trip and pounce if the favorite fades in the long Hawthorne homestretch.

◗ Alex Cintron fractured two vertebrae in his neck Saturday when his mount in the Hawthorne Derby, Nucifera, clipped heels and went down midway through the race. Cintron, in from Delaware for trainer Graham Motion, won’t require surgery, according to agent Mark Mace, but was fitted with a neck brace when discharged from the hospital Sunday. Cintron could be out seven or eight weeks, said Mace.