In what could be characterized as the most dominant performance of the year in Meadowlands Racetrack's weekly pacing feature, Maximus Miki destroyed his foes with a wicked front-end speed mile on Saturday, May 31 in the marquee $37,671 event for Open pacers.
“I wanted to be aggressive tonight,” said winning driver Andy McCarthy. “'Miki' is so big and powerful, I knew the wind [with gusts to 28 mph] wouldn’t bother him. He just kind of needed a blowout.”
Blowout might be understating things a tad.
Maximus Miki exploded from post five in the six-horse field and raced on a three-length lead at the quarter in :27 as Voukefalas (Jordan Stratton) raced second and 3-5 favourite Sabonis (Scott Zeron), off a 1:49.4 qualifier, was third.
The field tightened up some at the :54.3 half before ‘Miki’ used an explosive third quarter of :27 to open up a 4-3/4-length edge as three-quarters was reached in 1:21.3 while continuing his dazzling speed show.
“[During the warmup] I kind of got his attention a little bit,” said McCarthy. “I wanted to get his juices flowing.”
Maximus Miki, a six-year-old gelded son of Always B Miki-Beach Gal, then finished the job with a :27.1 kicker to complete the mile in 1:48.4, just two-fifths of a second slower than Mad Max Hanover’s clocking of 1:48.2, which is the fastest of 2025 at The Big M. It was 7-1/4 lengths back to Macs Delight (Brett Beckwith), who closed well for second to complete an all Tom Cancelliere-trained exacta. Sabonis was third.
What about opening up all of that separation on the field?
“He does that on his own,” said McCarthy. “He doesn’t get tired. He might get outpaced sometimes but he doesn’t get tired. He’s quite a good horse. I think he’s got a big chance [to have a big year].”
Owned by John Cancelliere of Clark, New Jersey, Maximus Miki now has 22 wins from just 49 lifetime starts, good for a bankroll of $410,818.
He paid $15.60 as the 6-1 third choice in the wagering.
Patrick Ryder, Mark Herschberger, Jason Bartlett and Jordan Stratton led the driver colony with two winners each. Bill MacKenzie topped the trainers with a pair of walks down victory lane
A carryover of $5,085 motivated players to pour $34,796 of “new money” into the 20-cent Pick-6 pool, and after a sequence had winners' odds of 3-1, 4-1, 6-1, 2-1, 3-1 and 5-2, winning tickets were exchanged for a handsome $8,664.72.
All-source handle on the 12-race card totalled $2,504,842 USD.
Racing resumes on Friday at 6:20 p.m.
(With files from Meadowlands Racetrack)