The Dudes finish 1-2 in Gold Cup

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The Dudes did it.

First Dude held off Game On Dude by a nose to win the $500,000 Hollywood Gold Cup on Saturday, giving Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert a 1-2 finish.

The victory earned First Dude an automatic berth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in November at Churchill Downs.

Their sweep of the top two places salvaged the day for Baffert, who earlier saw 1-2 favorite Coil lose the $150,000 Swaps Stakes by a head. His horses went 0-for-3 at Calder in Miami, including a neck loss in one of the stakes races.

“I was having a bad day,” he said.

But the Dudes put a smile on his tanned face.

“I was hoping for a dead heat, which would have been really cool. They both could have gotten a ‘Win and You’re In’ and really bust out the Breeders’ Cup,” he said. “I knew I’d won it; I just didn’t know which one.”

The last trainer to go 1-2 in the Gold Cup was the late Bobby Frankel in 2001, when Aptitude and Skimming did so after Futural was disqualified from first and placed third. Richard Mandella, who trained fourth-place Setsuko, swept the top three spots in the 1997 race.

Besides a spot in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, First Dude’s $150,000 entry fee and $10,000 in travel costs will be paid as part of the BC Challenge program. If the horses had dead-heated, both would have received berths in the race.

First Dude ran 1¼ miles under Martin Garcia in 2:01.57 and paid $10.20, $4.80 and $3.20. First Dude was second in last year’s Preakness and third in the Belmont for owner Donald Dizney, who also bred the 4-year-old bay colt.

“I knew there was speed in the race, so I just broke and tried to get him to relax and make one run,” Garcia said. “That’s the key to this horse, to make him relax. If you start fighting him, he’ll just take off and no matter what you do you cannot pull him up because he’s a big horse.”

Ridden by Chantal Sutherland, Game On Dude returned $5.60 and $3.60 after setting the early pace.

“Twirling Candy felt so powerful, like he was going to pass me, but Game On Dude can get the mile and a quarter and Twirling Candy just faltered a little bit late,” Sutherland said. “I could feel Twirling Candy’s heart breaking.”

Even-money favorite Twirling Candy was another neck back in third and paid $2.40 to show.