Opening Night Take 2 for the Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono

Mar 16, 2017 | Racing

The Standardbred trotters and pacers will begin their 52nd season of pari-mutuel harness racing in northeast Pennsylvania this Tuesday evening, March 21, as The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono will present the first of 135 cards of the sulky sport scheduled for 2017, with Tuesday’s first race marked for 6:30 p.m.
The racing was set to begin on Saturday night the 18th, but two feet of snow at the mountain oval this past Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by high winds that caused considerable drifting in places, put paid to that idea, as for the safety of the horses and horsemen it was imperative to do a thorough job of track preparation, and thus the opener was pushed back until Tuesday.
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 at age three 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.
And speaking of Wiggle It Jiggleit – the very first race of the 2017 racing season at Pocono, a $14,000 pace for “non-winners of three races or $30,000 lifetime,” is likely to have as its chalk, starting from post three, a stablemate to “Wiggle,” from the Bergstein/Proximity Award-winning Team Teague of owner George, driver Montrell, and trainer Clyde Francis. This three-year-old Delmarvalous gelding – who is 3 for 4 in his brief career – is named Nine Ways (nine is of course three times three), and his fastest win is in 1:53. (That’s a lot of coincidental numerology.)
The fifth race companion “nw 3” trotting event to the opener finds the sophomore filly Gin’s Tonic drawing the rail as she makes her first start of the year for local trainer Neal Ehrhart. The daughter of Muscle Massive had only one victory at two, but she picked a fine spot to notch it – in a division of the Keystone Classic at The Meadows, where she earned a mark of 1:56.3.
Older campaigners will be spotlighted in a pair of $12,500 events. The ninth race trot finds veterans ABC Muscles Boy and My Love Bi, who both took their 2016 marks of 1:53.3 at Pocono, coming into this race off promising early-season form, while the tenth race mares pace sports no fewer than six distaffs who have won since February 1, all of them in 1:54.1 or better in all kinds of wintry conditions.
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. After Tuesday the 21st, Pocono is scheduled to race on Saturday-Sunday-Tuesday of the “following racing week” (March 25-28), with Mondays joining the mix on April 10.
A press conference/luncheon will be held at the track at 12 noon on Monday, 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. Pocono’s person of contact for media is Jennifer Starr, 570.831.2195.

First Friday boasts All-Stars stars

Jul 14, 2015 | Racing

The father/son team of driver Marcus and trainer Erv Miller accounted for half of the six divisions of a $180,000 Pennsylvania All-Stars event for state-sired two-year-old pacing colts on the first Friday card of the season at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono, while driver Dave Palone and trainer Ron Burke bookended the action for babies.
The fastest of the three wins for Team Miller was the 1:53.3 triumph of He’s Marvalous, a son of Delmarvalous (hence the spelling: remember the Del(aware)-Mar(yland)-V(irgini)a peninsula). He’s Marvalous made every pole a winning one while closing in 56 – 27.1 for the combine of Badlands Racing LLC and L. A. Express Stable LLC.
Also flying the Miller colors in Victory Lane were the McArdle colt McDave, longest price of the six at
7-1, as he rallied from the pocket into back splits of 55.1 – 27.2 to score in 1:53.4 for owners Ronald Michelon and David & John Prushnok, along with Ideal Jimmy, an altered son of Western Ideal who was a “pocket rocket,” gaining into a 27.4 kicker to stop the clock in 1:54 for owner D R Van Witzenburg.
Palone/Burke got the evening’s stakes action underway with a victory with the Well Said colt Genovese, who made a backstretch brush of 26.4 in going from fifth to the lead and then on to victory in 1:53.2. Burke Racing Stable LLC, Weaver Bruscemi LLC, Jack Piatt III, and The Panhellenic Stable Corporation own Genovese; the first two share ownership with the JJK Stables LLC and Lawrence Karr of the other Palone/Burke winner, the Yankee Cruiser colt Allie’s Cruiser, who made a quarter-move and then sped home in 27.1 to complete a 1:53 victory,.
The 1:53 time of Allie’s Cruiser equaled the fastest clocking of the stakes sextet, which was earlier put up by a colt sired by The Panderosa, Bank Shot Hanover, in familiar style for driver George Napolitano Jr. – on the engine – trainer Daniel Renaud and owner Robert DiNozzi.