Wilkes-Barre, PA – This coming week of racing at Pocono Downs at Mohegan Pennsylvania, with cards on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday at 1 p.m., will host the four $50,000 championships of the Bobby Weiss Series, named after the famed Pocono trackman.
The Weiss Series is written for developing 3-year-olds to be given a platform to develop their top skills, especially with the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes and Stallion Series competition starting up just around the corner. The Weiss finales are staged as follows: pacing males on Saturday, trotting males on Monday, and fillies on both gaits Tuesday. All but the pacing filly group also drew enough entrants for $20,000 consolation races, to be raced on their respective championship days.
The “glamour division,” the pacing males, will find Ooglesaurus (driver Jason Bartlett, trainer Joe Bongiorno) starting from post five, with Twin B Thriller (George Napolitano Jr., Dennis A Laterza) just outside him on Saturday. The two had been victorious in the first two prelims; Ooglesaurus took off last week, while Twin B Thriller suffered broken equipment while racing on the lead, effectively ending any real chance as he got rough with the malfunctioning gear.
Confident Volo was the only male trotter to win in all three preliminary rounds, and on Monday he’ll try for a sweep from post six (Tyler Buter, Todd Buter). There are two horses who won two prelims: Dilly Hanover from post one (Braxten Boyd, Emily Bost) and Captain Vodka from post seven (Ridge Warren, Robert Baggitt Jr.), the latter’s coming in the last two prelims.
Both gaits of fillies are racing Tuesday, and only trotter Concise (Tim Tetrick, Nik Drennan) had success in all three prelims (paralleling her fellow trotter, the male Confident Volo); she has post three on Tuesday. Aviatrix Blue Chip (Jason Bartlett, Jared Bako) and Allioop Blue Chip (Andrew McCarthy, Noel Daley) had two prelim wins, the former the last two weeks and the latter in the first two weeks before taking last week off; they begin from posts five and six respectively.
Among the pacing fillies, Miss Jum Jabber looked to be the horse to beat after nicely winning her only two prelims, but she did not enter her Weiss race. Her absence leaves a wide-open contest among the distaff sidewheeling set; there were no other double prelim winners, but six of the eight starters did record one preliminary win, and racing fortune is sure to have a hand in the outcome for this competitive group.
Free Pocono past performance pages are or will be available at www.phha.org.