New York Sire Stakes season begins Tuesday night (May 8), with Yonkers Raceway hosting the Joe Goldstein Trot for three-year-old fillies.
Four, seven-horse fields — at $42,975 each — go consecutively as races seven through 10. Post time for the 11-race card is 6:50 p.m.
The opening event is led by the season-debuting Plunge Blue Chip (Ake Svantsedt, post three). The daughter of Muscles Yankee tore through her division a season ago, including a track record (1:56.2) flogging for her weight class here in mid-September. She then came up ugly in the $225,000 final, but rebounded to win the $420,750 Goldsmith Maid at the Meadowlands. Plunge Blue Chip, co-owned (with Blue Chip Bloodstock and Tomas Andersson) and trained by her driver, went nine-for-10 as a frosh, earning $404,690.
The second division finds Fury Road (Svanstedt, post four), who nearly pulled off a 64-1 tote buster in last season’s statebred finale. A Muscle Mass miss, she won thrice with four seconds ($143,895) as a rookie. Svanstedt trains for Knutsson Trotting.
Alloveragain (Tim Tetrick, post one) wins the draw for her sire stakes/small track/state debut. The daughter of Credit Winner, co-owned (as Bax Racing) by Ontario trainer John Bax and Glengate Farms, enters off a pair of overnight wins, the latter in a life-best 1:54.4 at Woodbine Mohawk Park.
The evening’s third statebred soiree is an invasion of ‘those Marion Marauder people,' as Paula Wellwood, Mike Keeling and Scott Zeron have Jordan Blue Chip from post position No. 3. Taking the same route as Alloveragain, the daughter of Chapter Seven is making her first try over four turns, in New York and sire stakes action. Her frosh highlight was a third-place effort in Mohawk’s $375,000 Peaceful Way.
The first shall be last, at least as far as these races were divided. Lucky Ava (Svanstedt, post one), last seen winning the 225G finale a season ago (at 21-1), gets to pole dance in the evening’s final NYSS group. The season-bowing daughter of Lucky Chucky, co-owned by trainer Svanstedt, Little E LLC and Ontario-based Van Camp Trotting, won half of her 10 ’17 tries ($203,596).
(With files from Yonkers Raceway)