by PHHA/Pocono

Wilkes-Barre, PA — Yonkers Raceway is currently on hiatus from live racing which enables the best Gotham trotters and pacers to appear at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono for a quartet of $25,000 events on Saturday (June 3) and Sunday (June 4).

Saturday’s two features, both nine-horse fields, are for older male pacers, and the potent Pocono pairing of driver George Napolitano Jr. and trainer Chris Oakes is likely to have its presence felt in both.

In the eighth race they team behind Scott Rocks, the morning line favorite who has won two of his last four starts, including his last race at Pocono on May 6. His main rival may be Betting Exchange, coming over from Yonkers off two straight wins. He will be guided by Jason Bartlett, North America’s leading moneywinning driver so far in 2017.

In the 10th race division, Napolitano and Oakes are hoping for better fortune with Split The House, who has been parked in both of his 2017 seasonal starts. In the same race will be Major Uptrend, who is five feet away from having a 12-race winning streak. He is 8-4-0 in his last 12 starts, with two of the four losses by a neck and the other two by a nose.

Sunday’s first feature, race five, will find an equal number of males and females in the eight-horse trotting headliner. Much attention in this diamondgaited contest will focus on Homicide Hunter, yet another Napolitano-Oakes horse, who set a divisional world record of 1:50.1 here last year. Competing against Homicide Hunter will be Rose Run Parker, who has won more than $850,000 and hails from North America’s leading shedrow in Ron Burke’s.

Pacing mares have their turn in the spotlight in the 10th race on Sunday evening at The Downs. Call Me Queen Be, the 2016 Breeders Crown winner and world champion, will have to solve the outside post nine in this competitive group. Frost Damage Blues, also in the field, showed her toughness last Sunday at Harrah’s Philadelphia by going her last half in :54.2 to edge out Lispatty, the recent conqueror of the dual Dan Patch Award winner and world champion Pure Country.