Cocoa Beach is Hollypark Horse of the Meet
Cocoa Beach (pictured), winner of the $500,000 Matriarch during the Turf Festival, was voted top horse of Hollywood Park's 40-day autumn meet, which concluded Sunday.
Cocoa Beach, owned by Godolphin Stable and trained by Saeed bin Suroor, was a unanimous winner in voting by the media. She defeated defending Matriarch champion Precious Kitten by a half-length in her first turf race since her career debut in Chile in January 2007.
Pioneerof the Nile, winner of Saturday's $750,000 CashCall Futurity, was a unanimous pick as 2-year-old and 2-year-old male of the year. Pioneerof the Nile beat I Want Revenge by a nose in the Grade I Futurity.
Other winners:
2-year-old filly: Laragh (unanimous)
3-year-old: Court Vision (unanimous)
3-year-old male: Court Vision
3-year-old filly: Briecat
Older male: Slew's Tizzy
Turf Horse: Hyperbaric
Claiming horse: Soupy
Sprinter: Johnny Eves, in a 5-4 vote over California Flag
Trainer: Doug O'Neill (unanimous)
Jockey: Rafael Bejarano (unanimous)
Apprentice jockey: Pedro Arambula
How Briecat wasn't a unanimous choice for 3YO Filly honors is shocking.
She was 2-for-2 at the meet, beat older foes in both of those races and dusted quite a few Grade-1 placed filies (Model, Bai and Bai, Double Trouble and Baroness Thatcher) in the Bayakoa with virtual ease at 13/1 while missing the track record by 4/100ths of a second (I'm still in shock I got 13/1 on her that day).