The veteran trotter Unshakeable capped off an overland journey with a career-best 1:55.3 victory in Friday night’s $10,000 featured Open Handicap Trot at Vernon Downs
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With 10-time track driving champion Howard Okusko, Jr. doing the teaming for his wife, trainer Jessica Okusko, Unshakeable ($6.30) trotted in the outside rally route from fourth in the early going and closed from third in the final furlong to win by a head over Skads Winner, with Double A Gloria just a half-length back in third.
The come-from-behind score was the second at the meet, third this season and 17th all-time for the six-year-old bay son of Andover Hall-Sister Sammy, who raised his career bankroll to nearly $175,000. Driver Okusko owns gritty gelding along with Conrad Zurich and Wanda Polisseni’s Purple Haze Stables.
Okusko concluded his evening with a 1:57.2 tally behind the trotter Mystic Splendor (owned by trainer Okusko and Kenneth Finnerty) in Friday’s $6,000 ninth event, giving him three doubles after 41 current Vernon programs.
Saturday’s 10-race slate, which begins at 6:55 p.m., includes five divisions of a $61,700 New York Sires Stakes late-closing contest for three-year-old male trotters, plus the weekend’s $10,000 Open-1 pacing contest.
(Vernon Downs)