Author: by John Berry, for GLADA

Muscles For Life (Muscle Mass) proved for the 48th time he still has the “muscles for winning” as the 10-year-old won the Great Lakes Amateur Driving Association’s Saturday night special (Dec. 23) at MGM Northfield Park.

The Progressive Claiming Series is always a popular hit with horsemen, but on Saturday (Dec. 23) it was popular with racing fans, producing some of the best races of the night at MGM Northfield Park.

Treacherous Penny returned to her winning ways on Saturday (Dec. 23) with a gutsy victory in the $18,000 co-featured Filly and Mare Distaff at MGM Northfield Park.

For someone who won only three races during 2021, things have certainly taken a remarkably meteoric rise for driver Johnathan Ahle. The 26-year-old pilot, who still raced in amateur events as recently as 16 months ago, steered the winners of both co-featured $27,500 high-end conditioned events for pacers at The Meadowlands Saturday night (Dec. 23), scoring with Queen Of Success in the fillies and mares dash before hitting victory lane with the red-hot Soaring Now in the event for males.

Tony Beltrami took his competition pillar to post in the lone $9,000 dash for the American Harness Drivers Club Trot at Freehold Raceway on Saturday afternoon (Dec. 23).

Christmas came early this year for Johnathan Ahle and the owners and trainers whom he drove for on Saturday (Dec. 23) at Freehold Raceway. He won five of his 10 drives on the card.

Retiring pacer Ira Chief made his final official start as a 14-year-old a winning one, conquering his peers in the $6,000 Auld Lang Syne race at Cumberland on Saturday (Dec. 23), which was part of the track’s third annual Au Revoir Retirement Showcase.

When a horse racing secretary takes a look at the entries for a particular program, it’s sort of like partaking in a Christmas grab bag undertaking — you just don’t know what you’re going to end up with.

With just two MADC races carded on Friday night (Dec. 22), a few days before Christmas, both events featured horses from way off the pace winning as the front end wasn’t where you wanted to be. A majority of the early races found horses coming from mid-pack to near the back at the start of the race, who charged home through the long Big M stretch.

With a sequence that saw five consecutive favorites score starting in the second leg, it appeared that the 20-cent Pick-8 would finally yield a winning ticket at The Meadowlands Friday night (Dec. 22).