Yonkers Raceway near New York City is currently taking a half-month hiatus from live racing, with many of the best Gotham trotters and pacers finding their way to The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono this weekend – so many that a quartet of $25,000 Winners Over events have been carded during the racing on Saturday and Sunday at the mountain oval.
Saturday’s two features, both nine-horse fields, are for older male pacers, and the potent Pocono pairing of driver George Napolitano Jr. and trainer Chris Oakes is likely to have its presence felt in both. In the eighth race division they team behind Scott Rocks, the morning line favourite who has won two of his last four starts, including his last race at Pocono on May 6, a 1:51.4 triumph over a sloppy track. His main rival may be Betting Exchange, coming over from Yonkers off two straight wins, and to be guided by Jason Bartlett, North America’s leading money-winning driver so far in 2017.
In the 10th race division, Napolitano and Oakes are hoping for better fortune with Split The House, who has been parked the mile in both of his 2017 seasonal starts. This horse has amazing speed under the right circumstances – as when he passed the midway pole in :52.1 in the Potomac Pace at Rosecroft last year, the fastest time at the half ever in a mile race on an “f”-sized oval. Betting “against the House” here will be Major Uptrend, who is five feet away from having a 12-race winning streak – in his last dozen, he’s 8-4-0, with two of the four losses by a neck (two feet each) and the other two by a nose.
Sunday’s first feature, race five, will find an equal number of males and females in the eight-horse trotting headliner. Much attention in this diamond-gaited contest will focus on Homicide Hunter, yet another Napolitano-Oakes horse, who set a divisional world record of 1:50.1 here last year, and the $850,000-plus winner Rose Run Parker, from North America’s leading shedrow, that of Ron Burke.
Pacing mares have their turn in the spotlight in the 10th race on Sunday evening at The Downs. The 2016 Breeders Crown winner Call Me Queen Be will have to solve the outside post nine in this competitive group, while Frost Damage Blues showed her toughness last Sunday at Philly by going her last half in :54.2 raw to edge out Lispatty, recent conqueror of the great distaff Pure Country.
(PHHA / Pocono)