Horse Racing Roundup : Creme Fraiche Wins Tropical Park Handicap by Nose

Creme Fraiche outfinished 3-5 favorite Cryptoclearance by a nose Saturday to win the $219,600 Tropical Park Handicap at Calder in Miami as both horses broke the track record of 2:07 for a 1 miles.

The winning time was 2:05 4/5, and Creme Fraiche, trained by Woody Stephens, paid $7.60 to win.

“It was closer than I wanted it to be, but you can’t plan a race beforehand . . . you have to ride it the way it falls,” jockey Angel Cordero said. “He raced real well. When he got the lead he tried to pull himself up but once he saw that other horse coming to him, he dug in and kept running.”

The $131,760 winner’s purse raised Creme Fraiche’s earnings to $3.77 million and regained him the distinction of being the leading money-winning horse in training.

Perfect Spy, a Canadian-bred gelding who has already beaten Forty Niner this year, proved he can run in the mud when he won the $164,100 Bay Shore Stakes on a sloppy Aqueduct track in New York.

Perfect Spy, ridden by Robbie Davis, overtook favored Success Express in the final strides for a three-quarter-length victory in the 7-furlong Bay Shore, one of the New York prep races for the Triple Crown series.

It will be followed by the Gotham Stakes at a mile April 9 and the Wood Memorial at 1 1/8 miles April 23.

Perfect Spy was timed in 1:22 3/5 and paid $10 to win.

Despite being stopped in midstretch, Ifrad angled to the outside and tracked down The Medic and Blanco to win the $150,000 San Francisco Mile at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif.

Ifrad finished a neck ahead of The Medic, with Blanco another two lengths back.

“I should have won by four lengths with all the trouble I had in the stretch,” jockey Tom Chapman said. “But this horse just exploded inside the sixteenth pole.”

Ifrad covered the mile on grass in 1:36 2/5, giving trainer Charlie Whittingham his 516th stakes victory and 188th in a race worth $100,000 or more. Coupled in the wagering with Temperate Sil, the Whittingham-trained entry paid $5.00 to win as the 3-2 choice.

Odds-on favorite Lost Code scored a wire-to-wire victory over Red Attack and Demons Begone in the $122,500 Razorback Handicap at Oaklawn Park at Hot Springs, Ark.

Lost Code, the $30,000 Codex colt who came out of Alabama to win $1.13 million and push Alysheba and Bet Twice to one of the best finishes ever in the 1987 Haskell Invitational, raced easily to a 3-length win. It was the 4-year-old colt’s second victory in as many starts following a five-month layoff due to arthroscopic knee surgery. He covered the 1 1/16-mile course under Craig Perret in 1:40 2/5.