Magna Entertainment Corporation's Sunshine Millions is an 8-race series split between Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita Park, featuring horses bred in California and Florida. Each track hosted 4 of the races. Santa Anita featured sunny skies and temperatures in the high 60's. However, rain and hail earlier in the week waterlogged the Cushion Track which failed to drain, so crews had to scrape the wet top layer off to get to drier material below. This harder surface led to very fast times on the main track, with the turf course rated good.
The highlight race is the $1 million Sunshine Millions Classic, run at Santa Anita this year before a crowd of 28,414. Diamond Stripes was sent off as the 2-1 favorite in this 1 1/8 mile main track feature for older horses, with Go Between the 5-1 second choice. Bilo set the early pace of 22.73, 45.10, and 1:08.33 while Diamond Stripes sat in seventh most of the way. Bilo stubbornly held the lead in mid stretch but Go Between, who had raced near the back of the field early, came out 5-wide and closed with a rush, taking over the lead inside the 1/8 pole to win by 2 lengths over Celtic Dreamin in 1:45.64. It was a long 6 1/2 lengths back to Seminole Native, while Diamond Stripes was another neck back in fourth.
Results chart
Winning jockey Garrett Gomez said, "My horse was traveling well and the pace was decent. When I swung him out around the turn, he really cut and went to running. The pace set up pretty much the way we thought it would. It looked like there was about three of them that wanted to go."
Leana Willaford, assistant to winning trainer Bill Mott added, "He ran really well at Keeneland over the Polytrack. Obviously, coming all this way (from Florida), we thought he would handle this surface. They were going so fast up front, and he closed well."
