DEL MAR — Trainer Jonathan Thomas has become the marathon man of Del Mar.
For the second straight week, Thomas scored a second straight victory in a marathon turf race at the seaside oval.
Saturday, Thomas’ 9-5 favorite Truly Quality pulled away in the stretch to win the Grade 2, 1½-mile Hollywood Turf Cup under fall meeting riding sensation Mirco Demuro. Last week, Thomas’ Mrs. Astor scored a second straight victory in the 1 3/8-mile Red Carpet Stakes. Augustin Stables owns both horses.
The Hollywood Turf Cup was the unofficial kick-off to the annual Del Mar Turf Festival that hits full stride Saturday with three stakes topped by the $300,000 Grade 1 Hollywood Derby. The expanded 11-race card, which begins at 11:30 a.m., includes the $200,000 Grade 2 Seabiscuit Handicap and the $100,000 Grade 3 Jimmy Durante Stakes.
The fall meeting and Turf Festival conclude Sunday with four more stakes on a nine-race card. The feature will be the $300,000 Grade 1 Matriarch with support from the $100,000, Grade 3s Cecil B. DeMille and Bayakoa stakes and the ungraded $100,000 Story Liberal.
Truly Quality, the 5-year-old gelded son of Quality Road, took the lead coming off the far turn and pulled away to a 1 ¾-length win over longshot Flashiest (Armando Ayuso). Second-favorite Balnikhov finished eighth in the field of nine older horses.
“Two good wins,” said Thomas. “Truly Quality was very impressive today. And I thought Mirco did a very good job of getting after him early. He noticed the slow pace and was able to get him in a good spot down the backside.
“When he got there, I thought that with his stamina, Truly Quality would really hang in there. It was tough out on that (No. 7) post and he gave up some good ground around that first turn, but he got a really good ride.”
The start of the 1 ½-mile race on the turf was almost at the end of the frontstretch. Truly Quality was seventh down the backstretch for the first time and moved up to third the second time down the backstretch.
“He’s an unbelievable horse,” said Demuro, who scored his 11th win in just 39 mounts during the fall meeting. “I ride him in the mornings and he knows what he is doing. He is the kind of horse that sometimes puts you in a difficult position because he’s lazy at the beginning.
“But as you go down the stretch, he goes. He wanted to go and you don’t want to interrupt his rhythm. He’s a clever horse. He knows what to do. And he’s a one-pace horse. If you go too soon, he stops when you get to the front. If you go too late, he doesn’t make it. When he came down the stretch, he wanted to win the race.”
Sweet Saturday
Eight 3-year-olds from around the country will be running in the Hollywood Derby at 1 1/8 miles on the grass.
Trainer Chad Brown, who has won four of the 11 previous Hollywood Derbys run at Del Mar, was able to ship in Salamis for this edition. Tom’s Magic also shipped in from the east. But the morning-line favorite is Test Score (Juan Hernandez), who moved west to win the Grade 2 Twilight Derby at Santa Anita on Oct. 25 after running his five previous races in the East.
Test Score is the early 5-2 choice with Tom’s Magic (Antonio Fresu) at 7-2 and Salamis (Umberto Rispoli) at 9-2.
Tom’s Magic won the Breeders Stakes, the third leg of the Canadian Triple Crown in September after finishing second to Mansetti in the $1 million Kings Plate at Woodbine. Also in the field are Maaz (Ricky Gonzalez), who ran second to Test Score in the Twilight Derby; Tempus Volat (Demuro), who won the $100,000 Let It Ride Stakes at Del Mar on the opening day of the fall meeting, and Friendly Confines (Hector Berrios), who finished second in the Let It Ride.
The Hollywood Derby is the ninth race Saturday. The 1 1/16-mile Seabiscuit for older horses is the stakes opener as the fifth race and has drawn a Southern California-based field of nine.
The early Favorite at 5-2 is Stay Hot (Hernandez), who ran second under Mike Smith to Gold Phoenix in both the John Henry Turf Classic at Santa Anita (on Sept. 27) and the Del Mar Handicap (on Aug. 30). Both those races were also Grade 2s at longer distances than the Seabiscuit. The second favorite is El Potente (Berrios), who has been off since scoring back-to-back wins in the first two months of the year at Santa Anita.
The one-mile Durante has drawn 11 2-year-old fillies with the Doug O’Neill-trained Hypergamy (Fresu) going for a second straight Del Mar win this month. The daughter of American Pharoah is making her fifth career start and fourth at Del Mar, where she has two wins and a second since Aug. 2.
Notable
Fresu had two wins Friday – Heads in Beds ($7.60) in the third and Jetovator ($8.40) in the ninth – to move into a win of leader Rispoli’s 14 wins in the jockey standings. Meanwhile, John Sadler had two winners –Eva Lea ($9.00) in the first and Flyover ($5.40) in the fifth to tie George Papaprodromou for the lead in the trainer standings at nine. ;
• The six-horse sixth race Friday resulted in a 1-2-3-4-5-6 finish order. The numerical odds of that happening are 719-to-1. And that assumes that all horses are equally likely to win.