East Rutherford, NJ – The
Meadowlands Championship Meet kicks off this weekend with the start of Grand
Circuit racing over the mile oval with the 2018 stakes season getting underway
on Kentucky Derby Day, Saturday, May 5.
The Arthur Cutler Memorial
trot annually kicks off stakes season and that is again the case as a field of
twelve trotters with combined career earnings of nearly $9 million will race
this edition over the distance of 1 1/8 miles for a purse of $182,500.
2017 Dan Patch Horse of the
Year Hannelore Hanover (Yannick Gingras) makes her seasonal debut in the race
coming into it off a pair of scintillating qualifiers for owners Burke Racing,
Weaver Bruscemi, Frank Baldachino and the J&T Silva stable.
Trainer Ron Burke has
entered four in the Cutler with Crazy Wow, Gural Hanover and In Secret joining
Hannelore in the field.
Adding to the intrigue on
the Derby Day card will be a pair of $50,000 divisions of the first leg for the
Graduate Series pacers. An overflow box of twenty three 4-year-olds were
declared for the stake and those two races will also be contested at the route
distance of 1 1/8 miles.
Trainer Ron Burke is again
well represented by four entrants, among those 2017 Little Brown Jug
winner Filibuster Hanover who qualified this past Saturday like a horse that’s
ready for anything.
The complete draw for the
weekend will be available on The Meadowlands
website later this
afternoon.
