Santa Anita: Midnight Hawk shows he's a player with Sham victory

ARCADIA, Calif. – Here comes the Hawk, the mighty Midnight Hawk.

Making only his second start, his first in a stakes race and his first around two turns, Midnight Hawk passed his test in the Grade 3, $98,000 Sham Stakes on Saturday at Santa Anita, establishing himself - and his celebrity connections - as one of the bright lights on the road to the May 3 Kentucky Derby.

[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]

Only six were entered in the Sham and only four started after the Saturday morning scratches of Life is a Joy and Top Fortitude.

The Sham became a match race between Kristo, starting from the rail, and Midnight Hawk, drawn on the outside in the four-horse field. They dueled with one another through the first six furlongs of the one-mile race in 1:10.50 before Midnight Hawk asserted his superiority and drew away late to win by 1 3/4 lengths in 1:36.48 on the fast main track.

Ontology was another 3 1/4 lengths back in third, and I’ll Wrap It Out trailed.

The Sham was worth 10 points to the winner under the system used by Churchill Downs to determine the field for the Kentucky Derby should more than the maximum 20 enter.

Midnight Hawk ($2.80) was heavily favored despite his inexperience. His debut win against maidens at Hollywood Park on Dec. 13 was impressive, and his allure is enhanced by being trained by Bob Baffert, a three-time Derby winner, and owned in part by several high-profile sports figures – Joel Quenneville, the coach of the Chicago Blackhawks; Mike Kitchen, one of Quenneville’s assistants; and Mike Tice, hired this past week as an assistant coach with the Atlanta Falcons.

Add in jockey Mike Smith, who won more Grade 1 races than any rider in the country last year, and the Midnight Hawk team is formidable.

Smith said he approached the Sham as “kind of a match race.”

More than anything, though, Smith “wanted to find out if he could go long.”

“If he can’t go long, nothing else matters,” he said.

Smith said Midnight Hawk was much better in the starting gate this time than in his debut, in which he broke poorly. But when Midnight Hawk turned into the stretch, “the crowd screams, and he wants to overexaggerate,” Smith said, leaning left to illustrate.

“It’s nice to have one that’s talented and has room to grow,” Smith said.

Midnight Hawk wore blinkers in his debut, but Baffert removed them for this race. Smith said that was a smart idea.

“He was better than he was first time,” Smith said. “It would be worse if he heard all that noise and couldn’t see.”

Midnight Hawk, a colt by Midnight Lute, was bred by Mike Pegram, who is also a part-owner, as is John Sikura of Hill ’n Dale Farm, where Midnight Hawk was raised.