On what was another difficult evening weather-wise with the wind blowing a gale throughout, The Meadowlands Saturday night card provided excitement, opportunity and value.
The excitement was provided by Easy Again, who won the $30,000 Free For All feature by leading all the way in 1:51.1. Sent out hard from the outside post six after a pair of scratches by Yannick Gingras, Easy Again got to the opening quarter in :27.4 and decided to duplicate those fractions for each quarter thereafter, including ripping home in 27.4 into the teeth of a fierce wind.
Easy Again is trained by Ron Burke for Burke Racing, Weaver Bruscemi and Panhellenic Stable, who bought the Dragon Again horse for $100,000 at Harrisburg. Easy Again has always been a high speed horse, but plagued by issues throughout his career. He certainly looks poised to be a force on the east coast this summer.
So far as opportunity and value, the nightly Pick 5 got the ball rolling with a payoff of $5,076, the early Pick 4 returned $1,341 and the late Pick 4 a whopping $23,854 (all $1 increments).
Panesthetic and Dave Miller made it back-to-back impressive wins, making a double jump in class, but going wire-to-wire again, winning the $16,000 B-1 Pace in 1:52.2 for trainer Andrew Harris. Panesthetic is owned by Arlene Shaw, Alice Bonenfant and Percy Shaw.
In addition, Dinner At The Met will head into Saturday’s Buddy Gilmour Pacing Series a perfect three-for-three following his 1:54.3 romp in the nightcap, a non-winners of two pacing event. The three-year-old son of Metropolitan is trained by Erv Miller, who co-owns the gelding with Bert Hochsurung, and has been guided to victory in all three of his starts by Marcus Miller.
Despite the snow and extreme winds, it was another $3 million night in East Rutherford, New Jersey as total handle checked in at $3,064,833.
Racing returns Thursday, for the first round of the Charles Singer Memorial Trotting Series with post time at 7:15 p.m. That program is the identical program from February 13 that was cancelled due to a winter storm. That entire 10-race program has been carried over to this coming Thursday.
(Meadowlands Racetrack)