As stakes season rapidly approaches, some of harness racing s most talented athletes including five defending Breeders Crown champions are among the 102 horses programmed to qualify at The Meadowlands on Friday morning (April 30).
Two-time Crown winner Amigo Volo headlines a stacked field of stakes-tested trotters in the eighth qualifier on the 14-race program. A winner of nine of 15 races including the Breeders Crown, Kentucky Futurity and nearly a million dollars in his three-year-old campaign, the gelded son of Father Patrick will return from a 5-1/2-month layoff after capping his sophomore season with a decisive 1:50.2 win in the Matron Stakes at Dover Downs. Usual driver Dexter Dunn is slated to drive the Nifty Norman trainee from post nine. The field also includes the last two Hambletonian champions in Forbidden Trade (post three, Bob McClure) and Ramona Hill (post seven, Andy McCarthy), as well as 2019 Hambletonian Oaks winner When Dovescry (post four, David Miller).
Just call them “The Road Warriors”.
With things at a standstill at their home track due to a COVID-19 shutdown, a pair of horses who call Woodbine Mohawk Park home ruled The Meadowlands Saturday night (April 24) as trotter Its Academic and pacer Sintra scored in the co-featured $30,000 Preferreds.
Sintra was nothing short of scintillating in overcoming post 10 to score in 1:48.4. The eight-year-old gelded son of Mach Three-Dancin Barefoot left hard from the outside in the 10-horse field and got a spot fourth at the pegs out of the first turn.
The 8-5 favourite came first-over at the five-eighths and made his way toward leader American History, who blazed fractions of :54.4 and 1:21.4 after wrestling control away from the early leader, 5-2 second choice Ana Afreet N, at the three-eighths.
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