For Opinion, click here for View from the Racetrack Grandstand

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Kindergarten Classic Tops Friday Night Card


East Rutherford, NJ – The Meadowlands reopens for live racing this Friday, September 8 with an exciting stakes card.


The last preliminary leg of the Miss Versatility series for trotting mares will go as Friday’s second race with a compact field of four racing for a purse of $40,000 in the second race. Caprice Hill, trained by Tony Alagna for Tom Hill, and Broadway Donna, Jim Campbell trains for Fashion Farms, have each earned over $1 million in their illustrious careers and between them decided many of the top sophomore stakes for their division last season. Opposing that are PL Jill and Oho Diamond, stablemates in the Ronnie Morales barn for owner Dan Clements that don’t have the lifetime resume of their rivals but both are currently in career form.



The Kindergarten Classic covers eight races on the Friday card, two each for all freshman divisions with the purse at $10,000.



The series was designed to provide races for the late bloomers and relative underachievers that need more racing lessons then some of their more advanced counterparts. Now with the various sires stakes programs concluded, the Kindergarten becomes a viable tool to get races for those horses against their own kind. There are several trainer who have used it to perfection and a few of those are well represented in this week’s edition.



Erv Miller successfully trains a lot of young horses and has a keen eye for placement. Erv has seven in on Friday coming from many directions from various programs, the most accomplished being Farsetti Hanover who was third in the $360,000 Peter Haughton Memorial last month. Farsetti became a Grand Circuit winner by breaking his maiden in the Reynolds stakes and has returned nearly $70,000 on a yearling sale investment of $27,000 for Erv and partners George Golemes and David Prushnok.



Nifty Norman also has seven 2-year-olds in the Friday mix and Nifty is another horseman that trains a lot of royally-bred babies for high-profile clients. The reality is that everybody can’t “Bee A Magician” and decisions must be made. Megadolce is perhaps the most promising of Nifty’s Kindergarten lot. She is a homebred Cantab Hall filly from David McDuffee’s successful race mare Bella Dolce who has been fast and consistent in her freshman campaign. Despite being winless in five outings, Megadolce has been second in four of those including a scant nose loss in the PASS consolations just last week.



John Butenschoen is a Kindergarten fan and it shows. He has entered a half dozen that fit the bill. John has a big barn of well-bred stakes types on both the trot and pace and got three colts to the Hambletonian final this year. The flip side of that kind of success and also an important component of operating at that high level is separating the prospects from the suspects. John will glean valuable information on who stays and who goes from Friday’s races.



More information and details are available on The Meadowlands website.




Live racing continues on Saturday and next weekend as well with a 7:15 post time.