Red Rifle secured his first stakes victory of the 2015 season when he rallied on the outside to win the $150,000 Dominion Day Stakes (Can-III) July 1 at Woodbine. Watch Video
With the 1 1/4-length victory, Twin Creeks Racing Stables home-bred Red Rifle ended a four-race skid that dated back to his clear victory in last year’s Hawthorne Gold Cup Handicap (gr. II) at Hawthorne Race Course. The 5-year-old Giant’s Causeway gelding bounced back from a ninth-place finish in the Belmont Gold Cup Invitational Stakes June 5 at Belmont Park.
Trained by Todd Pletcher, Red Rifle took command at the eighth pole and had enough to hold off Live Oak Plantation’s Florida Won, completing Wednesday’s 1 1/4-mile race in 2:01.93. Veteran Pender Harbour finished third, giving Canada’s champion 3-year-old male of 2011 the 22nd stakes placing of his career.
Bred in Kentucky by Twin Creeks and Tom and Nancy Clark, Red Rifle is out of the stakes-winning Gulch mare May Night, who also has produced stakes winner Notte d’Oro, by Medaglia d’Oro .
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Blood Horse by Frank Angst
7/1/15
Photo by Michael Burns
