Persuade Me made 14 trips to the winner’s circle last year at Cal-Expo, and anybody that watched her December 30 effort could easily imagine that number being 15 with better racing luck.
There were no such traffic troubles in Persuade Me's first tour of 2011, however, as Lemoyne 'Mooney' Svendsen came first over with Bob Johnson and Cynthia Rios’s mare en-route to a clear-cut victory last week.
“That race one back, she was shuffled badly at the half,” Svendsen related. “I had to do a lot of weaving in the stretch, and when we finally got some room, she was screaming with pace. She definitely would have won if we would have got out a couple of seconds earlier.”
Mooney corrected the oversight in the most recent outing, coming first over from fourth after a half and overpowering the leader for a two and a half-length decision in 1:56.
“You can be sure I wasn’t going to let happen a week earlier happen again,” he said. “She can be touchy, but she’s learning how to relax in the hole with age. When I came out with her going to the far turn, she was very strong.”
Notes
• Speaking of photogenic pacers, Most Happy Lavros added 15 snapshots to the scrapbook last season and also got the new year off to a winning start last Thursday (January 6) when he prevailed for Rick Plano to compete the daily double with Persuade Me. He suits up again in Thursday night’s (January 13) feature.
• Continuing this win-win situation theme, Plano currently has over 5,600 victories on the resume, including Cal-Expo track records with Pulse (2000), Kings Realm (2000), Claudius Augustus (2008) and Pacinello (2009). Plano trained three of these performers.
• Most Happy Lavros -- who won a third of his 45 starts last year and kicked off 2011 with another tally -- looms the one to beat in Thursday night’s (January 13) $3,400 headliner at Cal-Expo.
• Live racing resumes at Cal-Expo on Thursday, January 13 and will continue through Saturday, January 15. First-race post time on Thursday is 5:30 p.m. (PST). First-race post time on Friday, January 16 and Saturday is at 6:00 p.m.
• On Saturdays, Cal-Expo offers a reduced 15 per cent takeout rate on both the Early and Late Pick-4 wagers, with both Pick-4s having a $10,000 gross-guaranteed pool.
(With files from Cal-Expo)