The Meadowlands Racetrack’s Championship Meet will kick off this weekend. The ‘Big M’s first Grand Circuit race of the year will take place Saturday (May 5), which is also Kentucky Derby Day at the East Rutherford, New Jersey oval.
The Arthur Cutler Memorial trot annually kicks off the Big M stakes season, and that will again be the case this year, as a field of 12 trotters with combined career earnings of nearly $9 million will contest the 2018 edition at a distance of one and one-eighth miles for a purse of $182,500.
Last season’s horse of the year on both sides of the border, Hannelore Hanover, will make her seasonal pari-mutuel debut in the Cutler for driver Yannick Gingras. She is heading into the race off of a pair of speedy qualifiers (1:53.2 and 1:52.2) for owners Burke Racing, Weaver Bruscemi, Frank Baldachino and the J&T Silva stable.
Trainer Ron Burke has entered a total four to contest the Cutler, Crazy Wow, Gural Hanover and In Secret are set to join Hannelore Hanover in the field.
Adding to the intrigue on the Derby Day card will be a pair of $50,000 first-leg splits of the Graduate Series for pacers. An overflow box of 23 four-year-olds were declared for the stakes event, and those two races will also be contested at a distance of one and one-eighth miles.
Ron Burke will again be well represented for the opening leg of the Graduate by four entrants, among those 2017 Little Brown Jug winner Filibuster Hanover, who qualified this past Saturday like a horse that’s ready for anything.
The complete draw for the weekend will be available later this afternoon.
(Meadowlands Racetrack)