Boboman shows he can make the grade

Boboman showed trainer Richard Mandella he was indeed ready for Grade I competition by winning the 25th running of the $250,000 Hollywood Turf Cup on Saturday at Hollywood Park.

“When he won, I said right there that this is what I would try next,” Mandella said, referring to the horse’s previous race Nov. 2. “I wasn’t sure I could beat these kind of horses, but I wanted to give it a try.”

In his first Grade I stakes race after winning his last two starts, the 5-year-old was the sixth choice in the eight-horse field at 9-1 and ended up winning in stakes-record time of 2 minutes 24.61 seconds.

As expected, ex-claimer Symphony Sid, coming off a 5 1/2 -length victory in the Grade III Carleton F. Burke Handicap on Oct. 21, set the early pace, taking a four-length lead.

He still led by a head entering the final quarter of a mile, before tiring and finishing sixth.

“He just got plain outrun,” trainer Mike Mitchell said.

Boboman was fifth with half a mile to go in the 1 1/2 -mile race for 3-year-olds and up, fourth at the quarter pole, second at the top of the stretch and won by a length over Runaway Dancer.

“I had my hands full early on in the race,” said Garrett Gomez, who took over for Alex Solis as Boboman’s jockey. Solis was aboard favored T.H. Approval after riding Boboman in his previous four races. “Once I got him to settle, he kind of came out of the bridle. I had to pretty much ride him all the way to keep him where I was at.

“About the 5/16ths pole, I went by [Artiste Royal] and I thought I was in real good shape when I went past him. His whole attitude changed. He started accelerating, I ran in behind the leaders like it was nothing. He knows where the wire is, and that’s a good thing.”

For Boboman, the win showed “he’s come from grade school to Harvard,” Mandella said.

“He’s a very good horse, he hadn’t had the opportunity to prove it yet,” Mandella said after tying John Gosden, Charlie Whittingham and Bobby Frankel for the most Turf Cup victories with three.

T.H. Approval, the 3-2 favorite in his first race since an eighth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Nov. 4 at Churchill Downs, was never a factor, finishing seventh after being eased by Solis. He was removed from the track in a van.

“He was fine the whole way around until we got to the second turn, then he started feeling a little weird,” Solis said. “After that, he didn’t feel right and I had to ease him. I felt like pulling him up. He was off in the right front, but I’m not sure what it is.”

Meteor Storm, who had one victory in his previous 11 starts, finished in a dead heat for third with Artiste Royal, 3 1/2 lengths behind Boboman.