WILKES-BARRE PA – Resisting the urge to pull on the right line behind the first couple horses and move outside is often a key winning factor for both horse and driver at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono, as shown by the 1:53.4 victory posted by 16-1 Live Odds in the $16,000 featured distaff pace Tuesday night at the harness racing mountain oval.
With the temperature in the lower 40s, driver Simon Allard chose to stay in third with the daughter of Badlands Hanover, then got her opportunity when pocketsitting Dangerousprecedent popped out to challenge pacesetting favorite Freeze Out at headstretch, giving Live Odds a clear Pocono Pike. Some horses can't get into high gear fast enough to catch the frontrunners, but Live Odds had good acceleration and paced her own last quarter in 27.2 to take the lead past midstretch and win by a neck over Dangerousprecedent, who never had the lead but went on gamely to beat out Freeze Out for the place. Karen Taft trains the winner, who took a new lifetime mark, for owner Kristen Taft.
Single Me had to be sharp to take her second straight at The Downs in a $14,000 co-featured distaff pace in 1:51.4, equaling her seasonal best. Andrew McCarthy brushed the daughter of Bettor's Delight to the front early, opened some daylight on the final turn, but then had to fend off a late rush from American Major, with whom Simon Allard again tried late-rushing-from-third-inside tactics, but in this instance came up a neck shy. Ross Croghan conditions the winner of $298,620 for the Let It Ride Stables inc. and Dana Parham.
In a $14,000 trot for "nw 3 races lifetime," the Muscle Massive ridgling Silvermass Volo won his way out of the class with a 1:56.2 triumph at a $35.40 mutuel for "Trot Man" Mike Simons – but the horse's trainer, Michael Holcman, remains "eligible to the class"! One of the few Czechoslovakian natives in North American harness racing, Holcman won his training debut at Pompano with Matriarch Hanover, but then had to wait 923 days (which was only 12 more starts) to earn his second conditioning victory. Holcman seems likely to have more victories, though, as he has figured out the "big-money" end of the business – he was the owner of Matriarch Hanover and is the owner of Silvermass Volo. (And bettors – he shows a 99% profit rate on his lifetime trainees!)
PHHA / Pocono