Wilkes-Barre, PA — The common denominator in Tuesday’s (July 29) featured events at Pocono Downs at Mohegan Pennsylvania was Howard Taylor, who owns pacer Inflation Proof and trotter Shinkansen, both of whom finally found Victory Lane after some near misses.
Inflation Proof had had four second-place finishes and two third-place finishes in his last six starts, but he finally made a breakthrough and lowered his mark to 1:51.3 while winning the $14,000 headline pace. The Tall Dark Stranger gelding set fractions of :26.3, :55.1 and 1:23.2, and then came home well enough to withstand Setheworldonfire by 1-1/4 lengths for meet-leading driver Tyler Buter, who had four successes on the Tuesday card, trainer Hunter Oakes, and owners Taylor and Chuck Pompey.
Taylor also had a partner on winner Shinkansen: trainer Bill Mullin – but the Sebastian K S gelding was claimed for $19,000 out of the $13,500 claiming handicap event for trotters. Shinkansen also showed four second-place finishes in his last six starts, but he did show one win from the pocket, and that was the tactic driver Simon Allard used as the pair came up the inside and held off closer Vegas Ticket by three parts of a length. Taylor and Mullin had claimed Shinkansen for the same price from his previous race, so for his one-start stay for the partnership, he earned $6,750 minus expenses.
Besides Tyler Buter’s four-bagger, six horsepeople had a pair of victories: drivers Simon Allard, Jim Marohn Jr. and George Napolitano Jr., and trainers Robert Baggitt Jr., Hunter Oakes and Cory Stratton.
Racing at Pocono resumes on Saturday (Aug. 2, Hambletonian Day) at 1 p.m., two weeks before the track’s signature Sun Stakes Sunday; this Sunday’s (Aug. 3) 6 p.m. card will feature $217,966 of stakes action in the second preliminary round of the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes and Stallion Series for 2-year-old pacing colts. Free Pocono program pages are or will be available at www.phha.org.