Wilkes-Barre, PA – Hall of Fame horseman Brian Sears, driving in a purse race for the first time in 32 months, was victorious with Celebrity Hunter in a $16,000 two-year-old male trot on Tuesday (July 21) afternoon at Pocono Downs at Mohegan Pennsylvania.
After the race, Sears could be forgiven for thinking, “That was a lot easier than I remember driving harness horses to be.” As will happen with baby trotters, several competitors broke, and as Sears gained uncovered from third late on the far turn with the Captain Corey – Are You Ready colt, first the pocketsitter and then the pacesetter lost gait, and what was a half length advantage at the stretch call turned into a 1:56.4 twelve length victory, the horse’s first-ever and win #10,425 in Sears’s career.
Sears came to Pocono to drive for trainer Hunter Oakes, from whom the winner gets the second part of his name; the first part comes from the fact that Celebrity Farms is the co-owner with Flying A Racing Stable and Robert Becker. The victory came over a sloppy track after a brief midcard break for a passing heavy thundershower.
Celebrity Hunter was the faster of two divisions for his classification; there were also two events for the same gait and opposite sex, and one fllly, Don’t Stop Hanover, went a fifth faster than her colt counterpart while taking a new mark. Traveling approximately the same route as Celebrity Hunter, Don’t Stop Hanover had a harder task in the stretch, but she was able to catch pacesetter I’m A Hugger by a neck while going her last split in :28.4 (in the last race before the track went from “fast” to “sloppy”). The daughter of Greenshoe – Don’t Wait Up was driven by Dexter Dunn for trainer Marcus Melander and the ownership of Frederick Schwartz, Onda Racing Stable LLC, and Richard Pronti.
The only freshman pace of the day, for colts and geldings, went to the Captaintreacherous – Marinade Hanover colt The Tile Guy, catching leader Hascalovici by a head while taking a maiden mark of 1:54 in the slop. Braxten Boyd had the steer behind the Polie Mallar-trained colt for Richard Hernandez and John Moderack.
The only multi-winners on the day were Boyd, who got home first four times, and Dunn, who tallied twice.
Racing resumes at Pocono n Saturday (July 25) at 1 p.m., with the $29,500 first-class pace featuring millionaires Ken Hanover, Voukefalas, and Ruthless Hanover. Sunday’s (July 26) 5 p.m. twilight card will be the last Sunday program of the season at Pocono; it features the inaugural $75,000 Mohegan Cup for free-for-all pacing mares, a field with $4.8 million lifetime earnings topped by Louies Girl N, Unreasonable, and The Last Martini. Free Pocono program pages are or will be available at www.phha.org.