PrintTears streamed down Danielle Hodsdon’s face as she rode Mixed Up to the winner’s circle of the $100,000 Colonial Cup Grade I Hurdle Stakes, repeatedly hugging him.
“This is the biggest thing that either one of us has ever done,” Hodsdon said, crying. “ ‘Mickey’ is such an amazing horse.”
Showing the determination of a horse half his age, William Pape’s 10-year-old Mixed Up deftly snatched the $100,000 Colonial Cup, putting himself at the top of the list for the Eclipse Award for steeplechasing.
With the National Steeplechase Association horse of the year title up for grabs and four grade I winners with their hooves well in the door, Mixed Up was just one of 11 horses vying for the Colonial Cup in Camden, S.C., Nov. 21.
One of the longer races of the year, the 23⁄4-mile hurdle stakes is run over the larger Colonial Cup stuffed brush hurdles instead of the National hurdles. As expected, at flag fall Gregory Hawkins’ Red Letter Day (Bernard Dalton) sprinted away to lead the field on the fast Springdale Course.
With the rest of the field tightly bunched the entire race, Red Letter Day didn’t look like he could be caught until the second-to-last fence. At this point Irvin Naylor’s Tax Ruling (William Dowling), Octoraro Stable’s Best Attack (Jody Petty), the Estate of Calvin Houghland’s mare Sweet Shani (Xavier Aizpuru) and Mixed Up entered the fray.
Although Mixed Up didn’t fence the second-to-last well, he stayed in striking distance, and at the final hurdle he landed with a burst of speed. The entire field roared into the endless stretch. Just as it looked like Hodsdon had found the perfect spot to send him through, she faced a wall of horses.
Undaunted, Hodsdon pulled Mixed Up hard to her left and needled her way through Red Letter Day and Best Attack, sending the dark bay and making Red Letter Day work to keep up. As they crossed the wire, only a short neck made the difference between the two. Tax Ruling finished third, and Dale Thiel’s Zozimus (Jacob Roberts) slipped in to place fourth over Best Attack.
A lock for the NSA’s horse of the year, Mixed Up is now the only horse to win two grade I races in 2009, his first being the $100,000 A.P. Smithwick this summer in Saratoga Springs (N.Y.).
Mixed Up is a favorite in the barn, and Hodsdon has ridden him for most of his wins.
“Mickey just tries his heart out for you,” she said. “There was a gap between the horses that I was going for, and I hollered and sent him to it, and they closed up. I had to check back and go on the other side of Bernie, but Mickey’s the type of horse that will do it for you.
“Going to the last, everyone else was hitting their horses,” Hodsdon continued. “I thought, ‘If I can just keep him up to that point without having to get after him, he’ll give me all he has to the wire. He won’t stop until he gets past the other horses,’ and he didn’t.”
Although he placed second, Dalton couldn’t have been happier about Red Letter Day’s performance. Dalton rode the horse, trained by Janet Elliot, to the $150,000 Lonesome Glory Stakes Grade I win at Belmont (N.Y.) in September and knew the horse was trying his hardest at Colonial Cup.
“I thought the horse ran the best race of his career today,” Dalton said. “He jumped super. I’m sure the owner would have liked the win, but he ran his eyeballs out. They were chasing me the whole time.”
His Time To Shine
