Heyden Crunches 'The Crown:' Aged Trots

The Breeders Crown finals for aged competitors will join the two and three-year-old championships on the same card Saturday at Pocono Downs. Thus, the second of Bob 'Hollywood' Heyden's number-crunching installments focuses on the 'Crown's aged trotting categories

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Let's continue with the Meadowlands Racetrack statistician's look at both the Breeders Crown Open Trot and the Breeders Crown Open Mare Trot.

Breeders Crown Open Trot

• Arch Madness has hit the board in each of his three Breeders Crown finals (at age three, four and five)
• This race has been worth $1 million three times (the only Breeders Crown race to do so)
• 2010 will mark the 25th anniversary year of the 'Crown' Open Trot
• Lucky Jim paid the minimum $2.10 in 2009
• Driver Brian Sears has finished first or second five of the last six years
• This race has been clocked in sub-1:52 fashion on three occasions
• Corleone Kosmos finished on the board in 2006, 2007 and 2008, but wasn't in last
  year's final
• Females have finished on the board in this race on six occasions (the female-only Crown trotting race was not run from 1996 through 2003)
• Enough Talk finished fourth at odds of 4-5 in 2008
• Trond Smedshammer trainees have been 1-2-3 in this final five of the
  last six years
• This Breeders Crown division has gone for more money than any other in the
  past decade (an average of $818,000, most of any older trotting event)
• Varenne set a then-World Record of 1:51.1 in this race in 2001

Breeders Crown Mare Trot

• The race was not run from 1996 through 2003
• 2010 marks the 17th edition of this race -- the fewest of any of the Breeders Crowns
• Grades Singing won three of the first four editions of this race
• Falls For You finished last at odds of 4-5 in this race in 2008 for Trond Smedshammer
• On two occasions John Campbell drove a female favourite in the Hambletonian (1992, Armbro Keepsake, finished fourth; 1989, Peace Corps, finished third) and both went on to win this Crown division as mares
• Scenic Regal is the only Breeders Crown participant to ever be a runner up three straight years (1987, 1988, 1989)
• Mystical Sunshine raced at odds of 1-2 in this race three straight years
• Buck I St Pat owns the stakes mark of 1:52, which was set last year
• No driver has ever won this race back to back

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