Alphabet Soup Looks to Future After Classic Win

Since it appears he won’t have Cigar to kick around anymore, trainer David Hofmans would like to hook up Alphabet Soup with Skip Away some day.

That day might come in March, with the running of the Santa Anita Handicap.

“Skip Away and Alphabet Soup would be a good race,” Hofmans said. “Somewhere, sometime, I hope it happens.”

This is ironic, Hofmans welcoming a showdown with this year’s best 3-year-old colt, because if Skip Away had shown up at Woodbine Saturday, Alphabet Soup probably would have run for a measly $1 million in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, instead of running for $4 million in the Classic.

Before Saturday, Hofmans said he would have been happy to finish within one length of Cigar. Instead, Alphabet Soup, running the fastest 1 1/4 miles (2:01) in Woodbine history, beat Louis Quatorze by a nose and Cigar by another head and gave Hofmans and his owner, 82-year-old Georgia Ridder, $2.08 million for winning.

Alphabet Soup really didn’t kick Cigar around, he merely outperformed him in the stretch, but Hofmans was happy to beat the 1995 horse of the year fair and square.

“I’m glad that we didn’t win because somebody else knocked Cigar down,” Hofmans said. “We carried the same weights, both horses had wide trips and my horse was smaller. He might have been the smallest horse in the race. And when Cigar got head and head with us, we outran him.”

Hofmans and Ridder aren’t committed to anything, except that Alphabet Soup will run next year as a 6-year-old. There’s even a chance that the Classic winner might surface during the upcoming Hollywood Park season. There is a lot of grass racing then, and Alphabet Soup, a son of Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Cozzene, already has run three times on turf. If Alphabet Soup gets a rest instead, he’ll be pointed for the Santa Anita Handicap, and Hofmans also has his eye on the Dubai World Cup, the $4-million race that Cigar won this year.

Cigar, a 6-year-old whose breathers have been rare the last two years, probably will be retired. Trainer Bill Mott said he will recommend retirement and he expects owner Allen Paulson to go along. Before the Breeders’ Cup, Paulson had been entertaining the possibility of a rich race in Japan, or perhaps a farewell appearance at Hollywood Park or Santa Anita. On Feb. 15, Cigar’s stud career begins, at a fee of $100,000 per mare.

Besides the trainer’s standard 10% of a horse’s purse, Hofmans will collect on a future-book bet he made on Alphabet Soup in Las Vegas a month ago. He put $50 down on his horse at 85-1.

“I also bet Lit De Justice [the Sprint winner] pretty good,” Hofmans said, adding with a smile: “We’ve got to keep the handle up, so the purses will stay good.”

Alphabet Soup went into the Classic off a controversial defeat in the Goodwood Handicap at Santa Anita on Oct. 5. After winning the race, he was disqualified to third place by the stewards for what many thought was a very marginal case of interference on the clubhouse turn.

“It was a lousy decision,” Hofmans said, “but after saying a few things right away, I tried to put it out of my mind. I think the stewards gave [jockey] Chris McCarron three days afterward just to justify the call. But you can’t dwell on it. If you do, it’ll drive you crazy.”

The Classic, then, was Alphabet Soup’s first victory since he won the Pat O’Brien Handicap, at seven furlongs, on Aug. 17 at Del Mar. He beat Lit De Justice by almost four lengths that day.

“Beating the eventual sprint champion and then Cigar,” Hofmans said. “That’s a pretty versatile horse, isn’t it?”

Horse Racing Notes

Dare And Go, another horse that has beaten Cigar, ran 11th in the Classic. Breaking from the inside post, he was intimidated by horses outside him. A chipped knee prevents him from running in the Japan Cup and ends his racing career. . . . Cigar’s $480,000 purse for finishing third leaves him $185 short of $10 million. “Please don’t tell Mr. Paulson,” trainer Bill Mott joked. Cigar moved past Japan’s Narita Brian, who had been the world’s leading earner. . . . Dramatic Gold, Alphabet Soup’s stablemate, suffered cuts on his rear legs while running ninth in the Classic. . . . Falkenheim, fifth in the Juvenile in his first race on dirt, is headed for California.