Nova Scotia's harness racing season kicks off this week with Truro Raceway's 2025 opening night on Friday, May 9.

Beginning with Friday's 6:30 p.m. ADT program, Truro Raceway will host 30 race dates in 2025 through Nov. 30.

The first stakes event on Truro's racing calendar is the Donnie & George Turner Memorial Stakes, scheduled next Thursday, May 15, for three-year-old pacing colts and fillies that were foaled in the Atlantic provinces. This season's highlights will also include multiple Atlantic Sires Stakes, the Lindsey Construction Cup, Frank & Beth Stanfield Memorial Stakes, Phil Pinkney Memorial Stakes, Carl & Marg MacKenzie Memorial Stakes and Diamond Classic.

Ten races have been carded for the opening night program this Friday with the $2,500 Winners Over class featuring seven top pacers in race nine. The field includes American Risk, awarded the Fan Favourite Award at the recent Truro Harness Horse Owners Association annual awards banquet, for perennial leading trainer George Rennison and the local Risky Bizz Group. Starting from post three, the 42-time winner will launch his nine-year-old campaign off a successful April 27 qualifier in less than ideal weather conditions.

Fifth Estate, Truro's reigning male horse of the year, will start just to inside of American Risk in his own season's debut. The seven-year-old gelding by Country Estate is campaigned by trainer/driver Ernie Laffin.

Among the contenders are a pair of mares that are already winners this year as Darren Crowe, 2024 leading driver, introduces his recently acquired trainee from Maryland, Dakota Shadow (post four), to the local scene, while Saulsbrook Feisty (post five) returns to her home province after racing in Ontario following an award-winning sophomore season for owner/trainer Carrie Saunders.

Completing the lineup are Justa Country Boy (post one), Elm Grove Quest (post six) and Bettor On That Off (post seven).

To view Friday's complete harness racing entries, click one of the following links: Friday Entries // Program Pages (courtesy TrackIT)

(Standardbred Canada; photo of qualifying action at Truro Raceway from May 4)