The Little Brown Jug Week results are now in for the 2015 HANA Harness Grand Circuit Handicapping Challenge.

The week kicked off with two days of great fair racing from Delaware Ohio. Day 1 featured the Jugette and Day 2 was the Little Brown Jug.

Ray Cotolo jumped out to the early lead, selecting two winners on Wednesday. He scored with Bettor N Better and Classical Anne for 87 HANA points. Cotolo was the only handicapper to select two winners on a day where the front end was collapsing for the majority of the races. Ray Garnett was a solid second when he landed Speak To Me for 43 HANA points. The $29 win price was the best of the day. Mark McKelvie earned third without a winner. That is certainly a rarity, but the 19 HANA points earned when Bedroomconfessions and Smexi both finished second stood up to be third best on the day.

On Little Brown Jug Day we had four handicappers successfully select three winners. Gordon Waterstone and Earl ‘Super Computer’ Paulson each won with French Laundry, Lost For Words and Wiggle It Jiggleit. They also ‘ran’ second with Classic Martine to earn a top score of 76 HANA points. Dennis O’Hara clicked with the same three winners. Dennis had Rocking With Dewey in the fourth race to collect show money and earn 73 HANA points. Coming off a strong performance last week, the voice of Buffalo Raceway Michael Carter was a very close fourth with the same three winners but missed in the final tie breaker race. With eight races down and seven to go after a day off, Cotolo had elbowed his way to the front in the weekly friendly competition.

After a needed day off, all the handicappers reassembled to battle it out in six races from Hoosier plus the Milton from Mohawk. Anne Stepien earned the win and the honours as the only one to select four winners. There were two races on the evening where only two handicappers came up with the winner. In both cases, Stepien was one of those two. First was Stepien’s selecting Sunset Glider to win the Kentucky Stallion Management two-year-old filly trot with Sunset Glider. She followed that up with American Passport in the Elevation two-year-old colt and gelding pace. Her four winners earned her 219 HANA points on the evening and propelled her to the nightly win by more than 100 points.

The top five handicappers were all able to hold onto their positions this week. Sally Hinckley still has her more-than-200-point lead over Mark McKelvie. Stepien remains third, but she is much closer now to both Mark and Sally. Bob Zanakis and Earl Paulson were not put under any pressure this week and retained their fourth and fifth place positions.

With Jug week over, we turn to the anticipated final two weeks of action from the Red Mile. Wednesday through Saturday will hold eight different sets of Bluegrass divisions. In addition, we will also be making a rare but enjoyable visit to Dayton Raceway for the Dayton Pacing Derby and the Dayton Trotting Derby.

(With files from HANA)