Siphon Beats Gold Cup Favorite

Siphon, a 9-1 outsider who had never run a race longer than 1-1/16 miles in North America, became only the eighth wire-to-wire winner of the $1 million Hollywood Gold Cup, holding off favored Geri for a one-length victory.

The win was the 10th in 18 lifetime starts for Siphon and was worth $600,000 - nearly $183,000 more than the 5-year-old Brazilian-bred son of Itajara had earned previously.

Owned by Allen Paulson and trained by Bill Mott - the owner and trainer of Cigar - Geri earned $200,000 to raise his career earnings to $853,250.

Cigar was originally scheduled to run in the Gold Cup but minor ailments kept him out.