After successfully getting to race on one of the two days planned for the first week of 2017 at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono – Tuesday’s inaugural card followed a Saturday cancellation due to snow – the northeast Pennsylvania track will try for three cards of racing in this, its second week of the year, with racing planned for Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday (the bookend action starting at 6:30 p.m., the middle card an hour later).

The best race of the weekend appears to be Sunday night’s $20,000 10th race handicap trot, with the Revenue S gelding Meladys Monet assigned early 5-2 favouritism, and for good reason – he just may be the best trotter in North America right now. The winner of $1.06 million, trained by Kevin McDermott for Melady Enterprises LLC, is undefeated in a pair of 2017 starts, both against top trotters at The Meadowlands, and he has Brett Miller, familiar to area fans and currently The Meadowlands’ leading sulkysitter, coming in to drive.

Meladys Monet even got some luck at the post position draw for the handicap event, even though he’ll be starting from post seven in a nine-horse field: the three highest money-winners drew for the three outside posts, with Meladys Monet in the seven-hole thus the “innermost” of the “outermost” horses.

Saturday’s top purse event is an $18,000 claiming handicap pace in race five, with Crafty Master having to overcome the outside post eight after defeating the best horses on the grounds at Rideau Carleton Raceway in Ottawa in his last start. The co-features are a pair of $15,500 conditioned events for older performers, with the Amber Buter stable having a top contender in both – the $900,000 winner Zooming in the eighth race trot, and the hot City Hall, coming off two wins and a second in his last three starts, in the 10th race pace.

The focus of Tuesday’s racing will likely fall on younger horses prepping for the $700,000 Bobby Weiss Series contests starting up in early April. The four Weiss Series, named after Pocono’s famed trackman who was the main architect of the dark red oval becoming the favourite racing surface of countless top trainers, have been known to be a stepping stone to greatness – such was the case with J L Cruze, who won his 2015 Weiss Championship, then later that year went on to become one of only three trotters to ever beat 1:50 in a race, with a 1:49.4 triumph at The Meadowlands against the best in the sport.

(PHHA / Pocono)