The Hollywood Gold Cup

The Hollywood Gold Cup Jul 5, 2013 19:59:26 GMT -5

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Post by Evelyn on Jul 5, 2013 19:59:26 GMT -5

The Hollywood Gold Cup is an American Grade I stakes race for thoroughbred horses inaugurated in 1938 at Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood, California. It was run as a handicap race until 1997, when it was switched to weight-for-age conditions. In 2005, the Gold Cup returned to the original handicap format.

The Hollywood Gold Cup is run over a distance of 1¼ miles on Cushion Track synthetic dirt and currently carries a purse of $750,000. It is open to three-year-olds and up and is one of the premier races[according to whom?] on the West Coast of the United States, along with the Santa Anita Handicap from Santa Anita Park, and the Pacific Classic Stakes at Del Mar Racetrack.

Only three fillies or mares have ever won the Hollywood Gold Cup. Happy Issue was the first in 1944, followed by Two Lea in 1952 and Princessnesian in 1968. [1]

Hollywood Park Racetrack opened its doors on June 10, 1938, and Seabiscuit, under jockey George Woolf, won the $50,000 added race's inaugural running on July 16.

The race was not run in 1942 or 1943, due to Hollywood Park being closed and used as an airplane parts storage depot during World War II.

In 1949, the Hollywood Gold Cup, as well as the entire 1949 meeting, was held at Santa Anita Park, due to a devastating fire at Hollywood Park on the night of May 5, 1949. Solidarity won the 1949 running on July 16. The Hollywood Park grandstand was rebuilt and the facility reopened in time for a two-part split 1950 season. The 1950 Hollywood Gold Cup, won by Noor, was held in the second part or Fall–Winter part of the split, on December 9, 1950. The following summer, the race returned to its usual mid-July running and Citation, in his final race, won the Hollywood Gold Cup on July 14, 1951, becoming the first thoroughbred racehorse to hit the career earnings mark of one million dollars.

In 1980, Mary Lou Tuck became the first woman trainer to win the Hollywood Gold Cup with Go West Young Man.

In 1999, the Blood-Horse magazine List of the Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century was published and there were fourteen horses on the list that had won the Hollywood Gold Cup: Citation, Affirmed, Round Table, Cigar, Swaps, Seabiscuit, Skip Away, Gallant Man, Challedon, Ack Ack, Native Diver, Noor, Two Lea and Exceller.

In the 73rd running of the Hollywood Gold Cup in 2012, Chantal Sutherland, aboard Game On Dude, became the first female jockey to win the race. The victory was a sweet vindication, as Game On Dude had also been Sutherland's mount in the previous year's running in 2011. Having finished second by a nose to First Dude, the tough loss had given Chantal the distinction of being the first female jockey to have a mount in the Hollywood Gold Cup, yet it would be the following year for the same jockey/horse pairing to take the prize.

Records

Time record:

1:58.20 - Quack (1972) (on natural dirt) (New track record, equaled world record)
2:00.75 - Rail Trip (2009) (on Cushion Track)

Most wins:
3 - Native Diver (1965, 1966, 1967)
3 - Lava Man (2005, 2006, 2007)

Most wins by an owner:
3 - Charles S. Howard (1938, 1939, 1950)
3 - Calumet Farm (1951, 1952, 1990)
3 - Louis K. Shapiro (1965, 1966, 1967)
3 - STD Racing Stable/Jason Wood (2005, 2006, 2007)

Most wins by a jockey:
9 - Laffit Pincay, Jr. (1970, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1986, 2001, 2002)

Most wins by a trainer:
8 - Charles Whittingham (1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1985, 1987)

Attachments:

The Hollywood Gold Cup Jul 5, 2013 20:06:58 GMT -5

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Post by Evelyn on Jul 5, 2013 20:06:58 GMT -5

This was the article that prompted me to post the HWC history as this will be the finale.

Last call for Hollywood's Gold Cup
By Jay Hovdey

In Los Angeles, the year 1949 began with three days of snow. Billy Graham came to town to launch his first big tent revival. And, on the night of May 5, the Hollywood Park grandstand burned down.

There was no direct connection among the three apocalyptic events, other than the fact they all made the top headline in the L.A. Times. It has not snowed in downtown Los Angeles since Jan. 9, 1949. Billy Graham is still hanging in there. As for Hollywood Park, the track reopened in late June of 1950 and has had a pretty good run for the past 63 years.

It has not been without disruption. The first part of the 1979 meet was greeted by picket lines of striking pari-mutuel clerks whose jobs were threatened by newly installed semi-automated teller machinery. Four racing programs were canceled in May of 1992 due to the track’s proximity to the riots triggered by the verdict in the Rodney King police beating. Later in that same 1992 season, the June 29 Landers earthquake caused Hollywood Park’s therapeutic equine swimming pool to slosh over its rim and flood a portion of the backstretch on the main track. In 2005, turf racing had to be canceled for the entire fall meet when the grass planted for a new course failed to grow.

But there was nothing like the fire. At least not until now, when the track of the lakes and flowers, Seabiscuit and Swaps, Shoemaker, Whittingham and just about every other iconic Thoroughbred personality you can name will be razed in 2014 to make way for a multi-use development of shops, office space, and housing.

Saturday’s final running of the Hollywood Gold Cup has fans and media scrambling for the misty-eyed reminiscences, and there are plenty, from the three-peats of Native Diver and Lava Man, to the isolated splendor of Ack Ack and Cigar, to the inspiring professionalism of Gallant Man, Affirmed, and Best Pal.

Still, there was nothing quite like the fire. Throughout the night, firefighters from Inglewood and Los Angeles fought the blaze that swept the length of the grandstand in barely 20 minutes. Pump crews sucked water from the infield swan ponds, while stable crews watched helplessly from the backstretch and tried to quiet their horses.

In the days that followed, as demolition teams began the work of removing the wreckage, the horses gearing up for the May 17 opening of the Hollywood meet had to be moved across town to Santa Anita. As with most mass evacuations, not everything went smoothly

“It was a very unusual situation,” recalled Dr. Jack Robbins, one of a handful of backstretch practitioners at the time. “I remember they were trying to load a horse at Rex Ellsworth’s barn, and he somehow got his hind legs over the butt-board. He took all the skin off both legs right down to the cannon bones.

“The next morning we were at Santa Anita, and that same horse was coming off the track, with his legs smeared in a purple lotion they used back then for scrapes and cuts,” Robbins said. “The kid that worked for me asked who it was, and they told him his name was ‘Kay-led.’ ”

It was Khaled, the imported English stallion that Ellsworth and his trainer, Mesh Tenney, were trying turn back into a racehorse. They failed, Khaled went to stud in 1950, and went on to sire 61 stakes winners, including Hollywood Gold Cup winners Correspondent and Swaps.

Of more interest to contemporary concerns is what happened to the 1949 Hollywood Park meet. All 50 days were run at Santa Anita, including all of the major stakes, and somehow California racing survived.

Expectations were conservative for a Santa Anita late spring and summer season thrust so suddenly upon local racegoers. Furthermore, the lack of proximity to the huge aircraft and industrial plants of Hollywood Park’s west side neighborhood made it unlikely that the emergency meet could live up to the track’s 1948 figures of average daily attendance (27,891) and handle ($1.9 million). Hollywood-at-Santa Anita ended up averaging 22,292 and $1.4 million.

The winner of the displaced ’49 Gold Cup was Solidarity, a California-bred son of Alibhai who was bred by Louis B. Mayer and bought at the Mayer dispersal by Harry Curland, the catering mogul, for his daughter Bernice Goldstone. With Ralph Neves aboard, Solidarity tied Seabiscuit’s Santa Anita track record in defeating a solid Gold Cup field that included Vulcan’s Forge, Ace Admiral, and Double Jay.

“It was different, racing at Santa Anita in the summer,” said Ed Goldstone, who was in the winner’s circle that day alongside his mother and still has the pictures to prove it.

Goldstone followed in the footsteps of his father, Nat Goldstone, one of the top theatrical agents of the big studio era in movies. Goldstone has kept the family’s name among the ranks of horse owners as well.

“I was just a kid, but when they ran the Gold Cup at Santa Anita, the image of Hollywood Park burning down was still fresh, and everyone wondering what we were going to do,” Goldstone said. “But racing dealt with it. And that day turned out to be quite a moment in our family.”

This time next year, there likely will be some kind of race for older horses over the Santa Anita Park main track offering a purse of a significant amount. In all likelihood it will not be called the Hollywood Gold Cup (suggestions for a name are welcome), and it will start its history from scratch. It will also be hot, but if the beer is cold and the horses are hydrated, who cares?

In the meantime, there will be a last winner of the Hollywood Gold Cup on Saturday. Anyone paying attention knows that Game On Dude has the script pretty much down pat. He won impressively in 2012 and lost in the final jump the year before, and nothing he has done during his 3-for-3 run in 2013 suggests he has lost a step at age six.

If nothing else, the people behind Californian winner Clubhouse Ride deserve high praise for trying Game On Dude for a fourth time in the past five months. They even could take encouragement from the fact that there was only half a length separating the two at the end of the Charles Town Classic in April. But that was Charles Town, and this is Hollywood Park. Or at least it was.

DRF