The Standardbred trotters and pacers will begin their 52^nd season of pari-mutuel harness racing in northeast Pennsylvania this Saturday night, March 18, as The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono will present the first of 135 cards of harness racing scheduled for 2017, with Saturday’s first race marked for 6:30 p.m.
The two biggest purse races on the Saturday card, each worth $16,000 and both for pacers, will come early at The Downs, in races two and three. The second half of the Early Double will feature claiming pacers valued between $20,000 and $25,000 in a handicap event; among the entrants is Freeneasy Hanover, who paced the local red clay oval in 1:50 while on a hot streak last year. The third race is written for “non-winners of six races,” horses usually moving up the class ladder to bigger and better things.
Many of this type of horse would eventually wind up in one of $15,500 co-features on Saturday, for older, high-level conditioned horses. The tenth race pace finds among its seven entrants Ontario Success, a 14-time winner in 2016 who comes in after good performances at The Meadowlands; their trotting counterparts have been slotted for race twelve, with Zooming and Wind Of The North, both career winners of $700,000+ who have trotted the Pocono oval in 1:51, starting from the two outside slots in the field of six.
The highlight of the 2017 Pocono season will come on Saturday, July 1, with the $2 million+ Sun Stakes Saturday card, which annually draws the sport’s best horses over several of the major categories. It was recently announced that Wiggle It Jiggleit, 2015 Harness Horse of the Year and the fierce seasonlong rival of 2016 Harness Horse of the Year Always B Miki, will make his debut for the year in the Franklin Pace elimination races, to be held on Saturday, June 24.
Pocono’s all-time driving champion George Napolitano Jr. will be on the scene from opening night, coming up from Florida, where he already has shown himself in “midseason form” with a 27% win rate; his brother Anthony, second in the standings last year, will also have a full driving schedule from the word “go.”
The basic racing schedule at Pocono follows a Saturday through Tuesday basis, with first post at 6:30 except on Sundays, when the action starts an hour later. During the early part of the campaign, Pocono will gradually “work into” that schedule: after Saturday, racing will be held on Tuesday, March 21^st; Saturday-Sunday the 25^th and 26^th; and Tuesday the 28^th; Mondays will be added to the schedule on April 10.
A press conference/luncheon will be held at the track at 12 noon this Thursday, the 16^th, with Pocono officials and horsemen on hand to take part in a preview of what should be a quality season of racing at The Downs. Qualifying races will be held before the press conference on Thursday, beginning at 10 a.m. Pocono’s person of contact for media is Jennifer Starr, 570.831.2195.