A horseplayer in Maine made the score of a lifetime by purchasing the single winning ticket in the Race 7 Jackpot Super High Five.
The 20-cent wager returned $39,302.52 for correctly selecting the top five finishers: 4-1 winner Ghost Pine, 9-1 winner Thorn In Your Side, 15-1 For a Bettor Time, slight 5-2 favourite Jungle Of Terror, and 29-1 Last Dragon. The winning numbers were 7-8-1-3-6.
The wager had carried over since it was last hit on December 5, 2015 for $36,414.
The Jackpot Super High Five requires horseplayers to correctly select the first five finishers in order. The jackpot amount only pays out if there is one single winning ticket. Otherwise, 75 percent of the net pool is paid out to the multiple winning tickets while 25 percent of the net pool is added to the carryover pool.
The race 14 Jackpot Super High Five wager has a carryover of $102,355.
The largest winning ticket ever in the Jackpot Super High Five was for $200,000 on March 14, 2015.
The beat goes on at The Meadowlands, as a bustling on-track crowd and simulcast punters from across North America combined to wager $3,283,111 on Saturday evening's 14-race program. This marks the seventh consecutive program at The Meadowlands drawing at least $3 million in all-sources handle, with the streak having begun on January 29.
The evening's featured $20,000 upper-level pace saw Rockeyed Optimist ($3.40) brush aggressively to the lead on the backstretch, subsequently drawing off to a four-length win over his six rivals in 1:49.3.
Tim Tetrick settled the five-year-old Rocknroll Hanover gelding just off pacesetters Sweet Beach (Anthony Napolitano) and Shooters Dream (Corey Callahan) through a :27.2 initial quarter before taking charge with nine-sixteenths to go. After clearing, Rockeyed Optimist found himself uncontested on the lead through middle splits of :55.3 and 1:23. Off the corner, Tetrick urged Rockeyed Optimist to accelerate away, and the response was instant. The odds-on favourite kicked on to a decisive win over All Week (John Campbell), who rallied up the pegs to narrowly take second at 41-1 in a photograph with Aslan (Andy McCarthy) and 2014 Little Brown Jug winner Limelight Beach (Yannick Gingras).
Steve Elliott trains Rockeyed Optimist, now a 16-time winner, for the partnership of Perretti, Berkner, the A & B Stable, and Battaglia. For Tetrick, the win was one of two on the card.
Brett Miller led all drivers with a hat trick, while Joe Bongiorno, Corey Callahan, and Jim Marohn Jr. joined Tetrick with driving doubles.
Earlier in the day, a trio of horseplayers punched their tickets to the 2017 National Handicapping Championship in Las Vegas, as Lucas Van Zandt (first place, $10,240 prize winnings), Paul Vinges (second, $5,120), and Bart Fooden (third, $2,560) took top honours in the NHC qualifying event at The Meadowlands.
(Meadowlands Racetrack)