Thecushmaker tries to keep momentum going for red-hot Hinsley

STICKNEY, Ill. – Veteran trainer Dave Hinsley won two races from 31 starts during the 2013 fall-winter meeting at Hawthorne. It took Hinsley all of three starts to eclipse that win total at the ongoing meet.

Hinsley sent out Striking Hight on the Oct. 3 card – winner. He ran Ultimate X on Oct. 8 and won, then won the next day with his only starter, Distant Dream. On Oct. 10, it was On the River’s turn to race – winner again.

Four runners, four winners, and a boxcar $2 return on investment for anyone who had decided to ride the Hinsley train this October, a train that also pulled in for a lucrative stop at Keeneland, where the Hinsley-trained You Bought Her paid $79.80 for winning the eighth race Oct. 11.

After the four winners, Hinsley’s three most recent Hawthorne runners have gone down to defeat, but Thecushmaker has a chance to start a new streak in the featured fourth race on the Friday card here. Thecushmaker is one of eight fillies and mares entered in a third-level turf-route allowance also open to $50,000 claimers.

Thecushmaker is an appealing 12-1 on the morning line and probably has a better win chance than that price. Her record on the Hawthorne grass course, which can be tricky at this time of year, stands at a sparkling 4-2-1-0, and in her most recent start, a close fourth-place finish last month at Arlington, Thecushmaker, a closer, was undone by a glacial early pace. There is more speed in Friday’s race, and Thecushmaker shows a snappy recent half-mile dirt work at Hawthorne – plus, there is the Hinsley factor in her corner.

Fleet Encounter, the beneficiary of the slow pace that compromised Thecushmaker at Arlington, is the 3-1 morning-line favorite, but an additional half-furlong and a potentially more demanding pace scenario tilts circumstances against Fleet Encounter, a sprinter for most of her career.