Auckland Reactor N makes his North American debut today at the Meadowlands in a qualifying race. With the exception of Bullville Powerful, the field the Reactor faces in his debut is nondescript so a loss today would no doubt be a disappointment to his connections. The time of the mile today is not important as the main goal of this qualifier is to give Auckland Reactor his first taste of North American racing; the speed will come in later qualifiers.
While many people will be watching Auckland Reactor’s qualifier today, there is more than one horse of note making appearances in today’s qualifying sessions as May kicks-off the season for the stakes horses. Three year old trotting fillies Cantab It All, Poof She’s Gone are making their second qualifying start of the season while Bar Slide, Costa Rica, and Spicy Wings are making their first start. Aged trotters Neighsay Hanover, Lanson, and Corleone Kosmos are making appearances in today’s qualifying sessions as well. On the pacing side, three year old pacing filly Put On A Show makes her second appearance of the year. The three year old pacing colts and geldings are being represented in the daytime action by One More Laught who is following up on his 1:52.4 qualifying debut.
In the news can’t get any worse department, Yonkers Raceway has announced a 15% across the board increase in their purse structure. This will put even more stress on the Meadowlands in their quest for race horses to fill their program. Yonkers realizes with all the tracks in the Northeast opening up, it was important to increase purses in order to attract the better horses. Unfortunately, with the lack of VLT revenue, the Meadowlands is unable to offer any inducement to get the better horses to stick around. While the other tracks continue to put on stronger race cards, the Meadowlands will be forced to card less attractive fields.
Enough Talk received his invitation to the Elitlopp. Wouldn’t it be great if Lucky Jim and Enough Talk hooked up for another duel in Scandinavia?
3 comments:
Have you noticed that the new condition sheet at Pocono drastically drops purses? The Open goes from 32000 to 24000, an upper level conditioned trot from 17000 to 14550. Would horsemen and legislators take this as a wake-up call to talk about lowering the ridiculous take-out rates, or will it just be more of the same?
I am correcting my previous entry, the Pocono Open was 28000, not 32000; still, a drop to 24000 is significant.
JLB, the legislators don't care. As for the purses being cut so much, it may have more to do with the better horses heading to Chester so the horse remaining don't merit such a high purse or it could be the casino subsidy cut could be hitting home.
I think no one is going to ask for takeout cut until they see how the Tioga experiment works out.
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