Golden Tree continued to feast upon the colloquial cooking of his adopted home state, charging to victory at Maine's Bangor Raceway on Wednesday, May 28 while recording the 50th win of his career.
The stirring gate-to-wire romp, timed in 2:01, was engineered by driver Nick Graffam and marked the third seasonal score from six trips to the post for the fan favourite pacer.
Remarkably, all 50 of those wins have come on the half-mile racetracks of the state of Maine.
Now a 12-year-old veteran, Golden Tree made his first pari-mutuel start as a three-year-old in April of 2016 at Scarborough Downs. Wasting little time in finding his taste for success, he won in only his fourth career appearance with a then, up-and-coming, and now familiar, Nick Graffam, driving for owner/trainer Eddie Fournier Jr.
After working his way through the Scarborough colt classes, Golden Tree quickly found comfort competing in the lower level conditioned, classified and claiming classes along the Pine Tree circuit and absent a 16-race winter swing through Monticello and Freehold, has made 228 of his 244 career starts in Maine.
Now trained by Neal Grass for owner Bernie Garrison, the Western Ideal-Before Dawn gelding shows little intention of resting on past laurels after getting off to a torrid 2025 start as he bids to build upon last season’s nine-race win tally.
Wednesday’s win was one of two on the program for trainer Neal Grass, who now resides in a second place tie with Autym Robinson on the Bangor Raceway leaderboard with eight seasonal tallies each. The tandem trail leading conditioner, Benson Merrill, by a margin of one.
Bangor Raceway will showcase live harness racing throughout the mid-summer season, featuring sessions on Wednesday afternoons with a 3 p.m. post time, and the popular Sunday matinees going to post at 12:10 p.m.
(Bangor Raceway)