Prize Giving Gets Stewards’ OK

Trouble-prone Prize Giving survived a rough trip this time, winning Saturday’s $80,250 Political Ambition Handicap after Hollywood Park stewards ruled that he didn’t bother another horse in the stretch enough to warrant disqualification.

Gary Stevens wedged Prize Giving between his stablemate, Belgravia, and the horse on the rail, Egipcio, with about 150 yards to go. After Prize Giving made the lead, his rear end swung out, crowding Egipcio about eight strides from the wire.

A stewards’ inquiry resulted in no change in the order of finish. Embraceable You, the favorite, finished second, one length behind Prize Giving and a half-length ahead of Egipcio, with Belgravia running fourth.

“The incident near the wire cost my horse second money,” said Chris McCarron, who rode Egipcio. “But that’s the way it goes. The stewards didn’t see it that way.”

Stevens said that Prize Giving shied from the whip. In his two previous starts in California for trainer Neil Drysdale, the English-bred 4-year-old had excuses while running fifth and fourth. Prize Giving, carrying 115 pounds, five fewer than Embraceable You, paid $7, running 1 1/4 miles in 2:02 1/5 on a firm grass course.

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Megan’s Interco, the 9-5 morning-line favorite for today’s On Trust Handicap, broke his maiden at Hollywood Park on Dec. 15, 1991, and has loved running over the Inglewood strip ever since.

The 8-year-old gelding has a near-perfect record at Hollywood: Five wins and one second-place finish in seven starts. If Megan’s Interco wins the On Trust, the $60,000 first-place purse would push his career total over the $1- million mark.

Letthebighossroll, one of the eight other California-breds Megan’s Interco will have to beat, has already topped the $1-million plateau. The 9-year-old gray gelding reached seven figures with his second-place finish in the California Cup Sprint at Santa Anita last month.

Owner Mike Pegram and trainer Bob Baffert, who bought Letthebighossroll as an unraced two-year-old for $80,000, considered retiring him after reaching $1 million, but they’re running him today because, like Megan’s Interco, their horse also thrives at Hollywood Park.

In 14 starts there, Letthebighossroll has eight wins, four seconds and one third, those races accounting for more than $400,000 of his earnings. Letthebighossroll’s only off-the-board finish in Inglewood came in the On Trust last year, when he was fourth as the 17-10 favorite.

The On Trust will be the third start in a month for Megan’s Interco, which has sometimes been a year’s worth of action for trainer Jenine Sahadi’s fragile veteran. On Oct. 25, Megan’s Interco ran eighth in the Cal Cup Mile, his first start in almost a year, but he rebounded on Nov. 11 with an eight-length allowance win.

“He’s doing good, and he handled the dirt well in that last race,” Sahadi said. “If he were hard-ridden the other day, I probably wouldn’t put him in here. But Corey [Nakatani] started looking back at the three-eighths pole and really wasn’t worried about anything.”

A social note about Sahadi, 34, who has won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint the last two years with Lit De Justice and Elmhurst: In March, she plans to marry Ben Cecil, the English-born trainer who has worked in California since 1992. Cecil, 29, became a head trainer locally in March of 1996, taking over a string of horses following the death of Rodney Rash. Cecil had been working as Rash’s assistant.