Frankel, Solis Keep the Wins Coming

The pairing of the hottest trainer in the country--Bobby Frankel--and the hottest jockey at Santa Anita--Alex Solis--was insurmountable in Sunday’s $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Memorial Turf Championship.

Frankel might have been in New York, tending to that division of his powerful stable, but his presence was felt in Arcadia, where Solis rode Senure to a narrow victory over White Heart.

Senure, a 5-year-old whose career started in England, will join a bevy of Frankel horses for racing’s $13-million day, the eight-race Breeders’ Cup card, at Belmont Park on Oct. 27. Senure’s victory came less than 24 hours after Frankel won the $750,000 Turf Classic at Belmont with Timboroa.

The Frankel barn--assistant Humberto Ascanio is in charge in California--has won 10 Grade I races this year.

Bob Baffert might lead the national money list among trainers with about $14.3 million in purses, but Frankel has a hammerlock on second place with $10 million, $8.4 million of it in the last five months.

Solis, riding Senure for the first time, brought Prince Khalid Abdullah’s horse from next-to-last as they bested White Heart by a head, with Cagney finishing third, another three-quarters of a length back. Solis has ridden four stakes winners in the first five days of the Oak Tree meet. The only day he didn’t win a stake--Friday--he didn’t have a mount in the race.

Paying $5.40 to win and running 11/4 miles in 1:59 2/5, Senure gave Frankel his third consecutive win in the stake and fourth overall. Mash One, now retired, won for Frankel in 1999 and last year.

In the other Grade I race Sunday, the scratch of Habibti, who would have been the odds-on favorite, turned the $250,000 Oak Leaf into a scramble of unheralded 2-year-old fillies searching for recognition.

The 41/2-length winner, the 15-1 shot Tali’sluckybusride, had beaten maidens at Del Mar in her only previous race and was running because her owners, Ron and Susie Anson, and trainer Alfredo Marquez couldn’t secure a New York-bound plane for the Washington-bred to run in the Astarita at Belmont a week from today.

After a 25-minute review because of three foul claims and a stewards’ inquiry, Mutamam’s win in the $951,173 Canadian International was allowed to stand at Woodbine ....With Oscar Andrade listening on the phone from his hospital bed, Eddie Garcia rode the horse Andrade would have ridden, Sassy Smith, to victory at Los Alamitos Saturday night in the $336,600 Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Assn. Breeders Futurity. Garcia turned over share of the purse--more than $13,000--to Andrade, who is awaiting back surgery after being partially paralyzed in a spill Thursday.