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