by John Berry, for Pompano Park

Pompano Beach, FL — Its Payday Friday paid early dividends Wednesday night (March 18) with a splendid 1:54.1 victory for owner-driver Dan Clements in Pompano Park’s featured $12,500 Open Handicap Trot.

Skip Smith photo

Its Payday Friday took top honors in Pompano Park’s Open Trot on Wednesday night.

The 5-year-old gelded son of Kadabra, trained by Renaldo Morales III, was sent away carefully by Clements before brushing up strongly around turn one to take command and control the proceedings off of panels of :28, :57 and 1:25.1 before sealing the issue with a :29 finale, holding off the pocket sitting Winemaster Hanover (Bruce Ranger) and the late surges of Dukester (Rick Plano) and Nothinbutanallstar (Mark O’Mara) to score by three-parts of a length. Flyhawk El Dorado picked up the nickel in the sextet.

After the event, driver Dan Clements related, “I wanted to be cautious leaving just to make sure he was solid and when we got away OK from the gate I let him trot — and trot he did! He is handy and can do it any way but I thought I’d be better off leaving, especially from this advantageous post here.”

Its Payday Friday won for the third time this season in eight starts to send his seasonal earnings to $28,750 and $211,388 lifetime. As second choice on the board, Its Payday Friday returned $5.00 to his faithful.

In the $10,000 co-featured trot, Hall of Fame driver Wally Hennessey guided the 5-year-old gelding High Blue to the largest payday in his career with a victory in a lifetime best 1:54.4, destroying his former mark of 1:57.4 accomplished over the half-mile oval at Saratoga.

Trained by Dan Hennessey for owners Paul and Patricia O’Neil, High Blue zipped out of the gate from post five through a seemingly suicidal opening quarter of :26.3 and then proceeded to carve out panels of :56.2 and 1:25.3 before striding home in :29.1 to score by a length over Ramzan (Matt Romano) with Increditable (Kevin Wallis) third — that 2-3 order subsequently reversed as Ramzan went up in the air near the wire. CJ’s Rascal was fourth while Majestic Won finished fifth in the field of nine.

In a post race interview, driver Wally Hennessey said, “You know, when I qualified him about a month ago, I zipped him out of there and he won wire-to-wire in (1):59 and a piece but he came home pretty well in that one. I raced him off the pace in his first two starts back with the first one against that Dukester, who won in (1):54 and change, and the one last week we got shuffled a bit but he still had good trot late in the mile. So, I decided to send him tonight and he was revved up early — that opener was all him. He just didn’t want to let anyone by. He kind of surprised me by his staying power at the end. It was a heckuva mile for him!”

Sired by Majestic Son, High Blue won for the initial time this season to send his seasonal earnings to $6,550 in four starts and lifetime bounty to $64,307. Not only was this High Blue’s largest career payday, as the fourth choice among the punters, High Blue paid $13.40 to win — the largest win mutuel payout of his 10 lifetime successes.

In Pompano Park’s Super Hi-5, there were two tickets that had the 2-1-8-3-7 combo, each receiving $2,736.20 for their 20 cent investment. The carryover going into Saturday’s program has vaulted over $54,000. Also interesting to note is the fact that since the inception of the Super Hi-5 at Pompano Park, the average consolation payoff has soared to slightly over $500. Post time for the Saturday extravaganza is 7:30 p.m.