Wilkes-Barre, PA — Charmed Life boosted her lifetime earnings to $1,445,137 in winning the $17,500 featured trot at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono in 1:53.2 on Sunday night (Nov. 4), and she did it in an unusual fashion for the mountain oval — she picked up the entire field from last.

Driver Simon Allard, sulky-sitting for brother/Pocono top trainer Rene, had drawn the outside post seven after a scratch, and was in no hurry with the veteran daughter of Majestic Son until down the backstretch, when he made a power three-wide move around stalled cover. Charmed Life had drawn within a length of the battling front duo, leader Crosbys Clam Bake and uncovered Silvermass Volo, by the top of the stretch, and she would have enough kick in reserve to draw clear by 1-3/4 lengths over Crosbys Clam Bake, with Silvermass Volo another length back in third behind the winner, who is owned by Allard Racing Inc., Yves Sarrazin, and VIP Internet Stable.

There was a trio of $17,000 co-features on the Sunday card, and Pocono’s top driver George Napolitano Jr. won both of the paces among the six victorious horses he guided on the evening. Mink Pink, sitting third on the rail entering the final turn, found a hole and Napolitano swung her wide in the distaff pace, with the American Ideal filly charging home swiftly to win by three-quarters of a length in 1:52.1 for trainer Chris Oakes and Crawford Farms Racing.

Napolitano, who has a front racing style that usually works effectively at Pocono, also took the division for males from off the pace, and about as far off the pace as you can be, last at the half after starting from the rail. But the Bettor’s Delight gelding Bellows Binge had the necessary late step to catch 25-1 pacesetter Uffizi by a neck while stopping the timer in 1:52.3 for trainer Dirk Simpson and the ownership of Peter Karras and the Dirk Simpson Stable Inc.

Lest anybody think that the Pocono oval had been totally converted from the speed favoring track it had been on the Saturdays of Breeders Crown competition, a front runner did win the co-featured trot, which also fell to trainer Chris Oakes, but a different driving Napolitano, Anthony, who put a new mark of 1:53.1 on the Chapter Seven filly Eunice. “Napolitano and Eunice controlled the pace and the sophomore won by almost seven lengths, her third straight triumph for Crawford Farms Racing, Northfork Racing Stable, and the T L P Stable.

And if anybody is trying to read the political tea leaves before the next Pocono card on Election Day Tuesday evening (the track is dark on Mondays in November), we note the victory of Make America Great, a son of So Surreal, who took a maiden event.