WILKES-BARRE PA – Ideal Cowboy chased hot fractions, then grinded up first-over and drew away in the last quarter to easily win the harness racing $25,000 winners-over featured pace Saturday night at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono.
Jason Bartlett, the leading moneywinning driver in North America so far in 2016, took a busman's holiday from Yonkers, where he is the leading driver and which is on hiatus for a week, and sat back while half of the six-horse field laid out hot splits of 26.1 and 53.2, with Bartlett and his winning American Ideal gelding beginning their raw move towards the 1:21 3/4s. Ideal Cowboy quickly passed his competition of the turn and drew off to win by five lengths over Jin's Dragon, who's risen from the "nw2800L4" class to featured race status within three months. The other member of "Team JB," trainer Jeffrey Bamond Jr., conditions the winner of $394,655, who lowered his lifetime mark by a tick, for Bamond Racing LLC and J&T Silva Stables LLC.
Bartlett wasn't the only denizen of Gotham City to take the mountain trip and make it profitable; George Brennan also came over and had three winners at press time to Bartlett's two.
Fastest mile of the night as this story went to print came in the $18,000 co-feature, as the McArdle ridgling McArdle's Lightning made every pole a winning one with a 1:49 victory. The winner went in 26.1 in both odd-numbered quarters, with the four-year-old, the youngest horse in the field, 1½ lengths ahead at the wire of the oldest horse in the field, eight-year-old Eighteen. Simon Allard guided the winner, who knocked 2/5 of a second off his personal best in triumphing for trainer Steve Elliott and the Lightning Stable.
PHHA / POCONO