$150,000 California Cup Classic Presented by City National Bank SOUL CANDY

INGLEWOOD, Calif. (Oct. 30, 2010) – Soul Candy took a liking to his first start on synthetics, rallying from last to win Saturday’s $150,000 California Cup Classic, presented by City National Bank, at Oak Tree at Hollywood Park.

Soul Candy is a 4-year-old gelding by Birdonthewire, out of the Lil Tyler mare Just Satisfaction, was bred by Madera Thoroughbreds, is owned by EZ Eight Racing Stable and Madera Thoroughbreds, trained by Patrick Gallagher and was ridden by Rafael Bejarano.

“It’s nice to run in these Cal-bred stakes,” said Gallagher, who also won the Classic in 2005 with McCann’s Mojave. “He’ll be more of a distance horse. He keeps going steady. He doesn’t have a big turn of foot, he just stays steady and that helped today. It was a nice pace and that helped him.”

With his first stakes victory, Soul Candy has four wins in 10 starts, earnings of $205,300 and was coming off a fifth in the Aug. 29 Del Mar Handicap. He ran the 1 1/8 miles in 1:48.94 at odds of 5-1 and won by 1 ¼ lengths over Unusual Suspect (who won the Cal Cup Mile in 2007), with favored Enriched third.

“He ran so well, he really surprised me,” said Bejarano. “I was last but I was in good position trying to save some ground. When I got to the half-mile pole I let him run and made sure he was picking up his stride. I knew they were going slow, so I tried to get him closer going into the far turn. (Gallagher) told me to let him come from behind and make one big run and that’s just what he did.”

For Soul Candy’s pedigree, click http://www.pedigreequery.com/soul+candy.