Super Duper Cooper bounces back in Big M feature

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – Super Duper Cooper hasn’t been all that popular with his friends lately, as the talented gelded son of E L Titan-Pink Power tasted defeat in each of his last two harness racing starts as the favorite heading into Friday night’s featured $17,500 high-end conditioned trot at The Meadowlands.

Surprisingly, after his pair of failures at odds of 2-1, the 5-year-old was bet down to 3-5, and rebounded with a superior effort to pick up his 13^th victory from 54 lifetime starts.

“He raced great last week, it’s never easy to get stretched out to a :54.4 half,” said winning driver Brett Beckwith of ‘SDC’, who finished second to Finite that night. “But he bounced back this week.”

Super Duper Cooper left the gate alertly from post 6 in the nine-horse field and sat a four-hole trip as Full Of Muscles took the field past the quarter in :27.1 and half in :56.2. SDC vacated the rail at that point and started to make up ground racing uncovered on the rim, and actually surged past Full Of Muscles at three-quarters, which went in 1:26.

SUPER DOOPER COOPER REPLAY

The Rico Robinson trainee was now in high gear, opening up an insurmountable edge on his foes in mid-stretch, before cooling his jets somewhat nearing the wire, holding sway to a three-quarter-length win over a late-surging Interview Fra A. High Speed Swan was third in an impressive outing.

“As soon as he straightened up [in the stretch], he exploded home,” said Beckwith, who was mildly concerned that his horse had provided a live tow for Interview Fra A for the final half-mile. “In that group, all of them are talented animals, [Interview Fra A] was good, but mine dug in right to the wire.”

Owned by Pollack Racing LLC, Super Duper Cooper lifted his lifetime earnings to $443,882. He paid $3.40 to win after completing the mile in 1:53, just a fifth-of-a-second slower than his lifetime best.

A LITTLE MORE: The Colin Kelly-driven Girl Almighty held off the Beckwith-piloted Miss You Joann in the 14^th and final race of the night, giving Kelly the win in the race for nightly driving honors, beating Beckwith five victories to four. … Per Engblom topped the trainers with two walks down victory lane. … A modest $1,380 carryover led to a total pool of just under $10,000 in the 20-cent Pick-6, and after a sequence where winner’s odds were 3-5, 5-1, 4-1, 2-1, 7-5 and 2-1, those with winning tickets collected $1,838.18. … All-source betting on the 14-race program totaled $2,871,649. … Racing resumes Saturday at 6:20 p.m. … This week is the second of four when racing will be conducted on Sunday. Post time is 12:30 p.m.  

For complete race results, click here: US Trotting results

by Dave Little, for The Meadowlands