It is not an easy task to win 14 of 23 seasonal starts and only miss the board on three occasions. That being said, there is a gelding that is looking to prove a thing or two this Saturday (April 16) at the Meadowlands Racetrack.
The Big M will present a dozen live races on Saturday night. The focus of the card will be the featured seventh race, which is a conditioned pace that has a $17,000 purse.
The entrants in the race are a diverse group. A pair of defectors from the ‘Levy series’ have received the nod as prospective favourites from the morning line oddsmaker.
Always At My Place (who will start from Post 2) dropped out of the Levy after two lackluster performances. He’s a talented Indiana-bred who looked like the next big thing for the same connections that owned the great Sweet Lou when he put together a couple of dominant performances against good horses at Pocono Downs late last summer. After a successful return to Hoosier in the fall, trainer Ron Burke put Always At My Place away for the winter in anticipation of the 2016 stakes season.
Owners Burke Racing, Weaver Bruscemi, Larry Karr and Phil Collura will give Always At My Place the chance to be the best he can be – perhaps the mile track and the services of Hall of Fame driver Dave Miller will be the catalyst to success on Saturday.
The accomplished Michaels Power is the other Levy defector, and there is no questioning the depth of his resume. He won the 2012 Little Brown Jug against a very good crop on his way to a $1.4-million season at age three. Now seven years old and with career earnings in excess of $1.8 million, Michaels Power has raced at the Meadowlands only a handful of times and has never won there. He is a homebred racing for the interests of Jeffrey and Michael Snyder, and is now trained by Mark Silva and is driven by Corey Callahan.
For those interested in playing the horses, all horizontal wager guarantees remain at the expected level, and the last race Jackpot Super Hi-5 carryover stands at $174,174 entering the weekend.
(With files from the Meadowlands)