Trial By Jury Wins Grade III, $200,000
Dallas Turf Cup Handicap; Boots On Sunday Tires Late in Valiant Comeback
(June 17, 2006) - Trial by Jury rallied late in the stretch
to nail 1-2 favorite New Export on the wire in Saturday's Grade
III, $200,000 Dallas Turf Cup Handicap at Lone Star Park in Grand
Prairie, Texas. It was the 7-year-old gelding's third win in four
starts at the 1 1/8-mile distance and first career graded stakes
triumph.
Ridden by Alfredo Juarez Jr. and toting 115 pounds, Trial by Jury
was clocked in 1:52.69 over a turf course labeled "soft"
due to overnight rain. The 12-1 third choice in a field of six older
horses, Trial by Jury paid $26, $4.80 and $2.60. New Export, a neck
behind the winner, returned $2.40 and $2.10. Waupaca was another
length behind in third and paid $2.40.
The win was Trial by Jury's sixth in 31 lifetime starts, and the
$120,000 winner's share of the purse pushed his career earnings
to $345,580 for owner Luciano Martinez and trainer Bruce Jackson.
New Export, conditioned by Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel,
was all the rage coming into the Dallas Turf Cup after his third-place
effort in the April 29 Inglewood Handicap (Gr. III) at Hollywood
Park. The odds-on choice broke alertly and contested for the lead
from the outset, but received pressure from six-time stakes winner
Waupaca.
"The pace was slow (:25.83 for the first quarter mile) and
then Waupaca came up on our outside and pushed us," said New
Export's pilot Cliff Berry. "He laid on us pretty good for
most of the way (through a half-mile in :50.72 and six furlongs
in 1:14.73). He ran good, but [Trial by Jury] just came up and got
us."
Trial by Jury tracked behind the leaders in fifth during the early
stages of the race before ranging into contention just before the
turn for home.
"He really relaxed nice and calm and that's what you really
want in a race like this," Juarez said. "Actually I had
everything in my favor because the pressure was on [New Export].
I was just riding the rail behind horses. When I asked him on the
turn for home, I had to split horses, but he started rolling and
that was it."
For Jackson - best known as the conditioner of In Excess in the
early 1990s - it was his first graded stakes win since Lord Smith
captured the Grade III Explosive Bid (now known as the Mervin Muniz)
at Fair Grounds in 1999.
"I think Trial by Jury liked it a little soft," said
the 52-year-old trainer. "The only horse I was going to run
was Brego (who finished sixth). I threw in Trial by Jury at the
last minute because of the short field."
Later on the card, War Bridle held on to beat Nuttyboom by a head
in the $40,000 Carter McGregor Jr. Memorial Stakes, a six-furlong
race restricted to Texas-breds. Boots on Sunday, an eight-time stakes
winner who was coming out of a 3 ½-year retirement to race
again at age nine, was well-positioned early in the race, but faded
to eighth.
"He's a game old horse that just got a little tired in his
first one back," said Boots on Sunday's owner/trainer Danny
Pish. "He needed it, but I really think he's going to make
it back. I needed to put a race into him and now we've done that.
But I really think he's going to make it back."
Also on Saturday, trainer Dallas Keen became the fourth trainer
in history to win 200 races at Lone Star Park when Morethanamouthful
debuted a winner in the sixth race. The 49-year-old native of Sterling,
Colo. - Lone Star's leading trainer in 1997 and '98 - joined the
likes of Steve Asmussen, Cole Norman and Bret Calhoun.
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