by Mark Ratzky, publicity, Cal-Expo

Sacramento, CA — Persuade Me made 14 trips to the winner’s circle last year at Cal Expo, and anybody who watched her Dec. 30 effort could easily imagine that number being 15 with better racing luck.

There were no such traffic troubles in her first tour of 2011, however, as Lemoyne “Mooney” Svendsen came first over with Bob Johnson and Cynthia Rios’s mare en route to a clear-cut victory last week.

“That race one back, she was shuffled badly at the half,” Svendsen related. “I had to do a lot of weaving in the stretch, and when we finally got some room, she was screaming with pace. She definitely would have won if we would have got out a couple of seconds earlier.”

Mooney corrected the oversight in the most recent outing, coming first over from fourth after a half and overpowering the leader for a 2-1/2 length decision in 1:56.

“You can be sure I wasn’t going to let what happened a week earlier happen again,” he said. “She can be touchy, but she’s learning how to relax in the hole with age. When I came out with her going to the far turn, she was very strong.”

Speaking of photogenic pacers, Most Happy Lavros added 15 snapshots to the scrapbook last season and also got the New Year off to a winning start last Thursday (Jan. 6) when he prevailed for Rick Plano to compete the daily double with Persuade Me. He suits up again in Thursday night’s (Jan. 13) feature.

Continuing this win-win situation theme, Plano currently has more than 5,600 victories on the resume, including track records here with Pulse (2000); Kings Realm (2000); Claudius Augustus (2008); and Pacinello (2009). Rick trained three of these performers, and in an upcoming column we’ll have his thoughts on those course-standard tours.

Live racing resumes at Cal Expo on Thursday (Jan. 13) and continues through Saturday (Jan. 15). Post time on Thursday is 5:30 p.m. (PST). Post time on Friday and Saturday is at 6 p.m.