East Rutherford, NJ – Super Duper Cooper hasn’t been all that popular with his friends lately, as the talented gelded son of E L Titan-Pink Power tasted defeat in each of his last two starts as the favorite heading into Friday night’s (Jan. 16) featured $17,500 high-end conditioned trot at The Meadowlands.
Surprisingly, after his pair of failures at odds of 2-1, the 5-year-old was bet down to 3-5, and rebounded with a superior effort to pick up his 13th victory from 54 lifetime starts.
“He raced great last week, it’s never easy to get stretched out to a :54.4 half,” said winning driver Brett Beckwith of ‘SDC’, who finished second to Finite that night. “But he bounced back this week.”
Super Duper Cooper left the gate alertly from post six in the nine-horse field and sat a four-hole trip as Full Of Muscles took the field past the quarter in :27.1 and half in :56.2. SDC vacated the rail at that point and started to make up ground racing uncovered on the rim, and actually surged past Full Of Muscles at three-quarters, which went in 1:26.
The Rico Robinson trainee was now in high gear, opening up an insurmountable edge on his foes in mid-stretch, before cooling his jets somewhat nearing the wire, holding sway to a three-quarter-length win over a late-surging Interview Fra A. High Speed Swan was third in an impressive outing.
“As soon as he straightened up (in the stretch), he exploded home,” said Beckwith, who was mildly concerned that his horse had provided a live tow for Interview Fra A for the final half-mile. “In that group, all of them are talented animals, (Interview Fra A) was good, but mine dug in right to the wire.”
Owned by Pollack Racing LLC, Super Duper Cooper lifted his lifetime earnings to $443,357. He paid $3.40 to win after completing the mile in 1:53, just a fifth-of-a-second slower than his lifetime best.
A LITTLE MORE: The Colin Kelly-driven Girl Almighty held off the Beckwith-piloted Miss You Joann in the 14th and final race of the night, giving Kelly the win in the race for nightly driving honors, beating Beckwith five victories to four. … Per Engblom topped the trainers with two walks down victory lane. … A modest $1,380 carryover led to a total pool of just under $10,000 in the 20-cent Pick-6, and after a sequence where winner’s odds were 3-5, 5-1, 4-1, 2-1, 7-5 and 2-1, those with winning tickets collected $1,838.18. … All-source betting on the 14-race program totaled $2,871,649. … Racing resumes Saturday at 6:20 p.m. (ET) … This week is the second of four when racing will be conducted on Sunday. Post time is 12:30 p.m.