Oy Gevalt! Kosher Mahoney heads $156,320 PASS

WASHINGTON, PA — Kosher Mahoney. Sounds like a sit-com or a Jewish-Irish crime boss. Actually, it’s the unusual name of a promising 2-year-old colt trotter who romped by 6-1/2 lengths in his career harness racing debut.

On Wednesday at The Meadows, he’ll try for two straight in the Hickory Pride, a $156,320 Pennsylvania Sires Stake. He’ll go from post 6, race eight, with Tim Tetrick aboard. The 14-race program also features a $60,000 PA Stallion Series event for freshman male trotters and a $14,694.27 carryover in the final-race Super Hi-5. First post is 12:45 PM.

The origin of Kosher Mahoney’s name is colorful but complicated. He’s an Explosive Matter gelding out of Blintz, which is a Jewish pancake often filled with cheese or fruit. Blintz until recently was owned by Robert Krivelin, one of the sport’s most decorated amateur drivers who also operates Woolco Foods. Through that business, Krivelin provisions a number of Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish restaurants, including the superstar Katz’s Delicatessen in Manhattan.

Krivelin sometimes names the horses he breeds to reflect both his heritage and his profession. For a Trixton colt out of Blintz, for example, he came up with Kasha V, short for Kasha Varnishkes, a Jewish concoction blending buckwheat groats and noodles. Kasha V is still racing, with more than $130,000 on his card.

For Kosher Mahoney, the first part was easy. To complete the name, Krivelin reached way back for his childhood nickname, Mahoney, bestowed on him to honor Jerry Mahoney, the favorite “dummy” of popular ventriloquist Paul Winchell in the ’50s and ’60s.

Eli Beiler knew nothing of that history when he purchased Kosher Mahoney for a modest $7,500 at a yearling auction and sent him to Symon Spicer to train. But Beiler, by trade a farrier who races a small stable, thinks he knows a thing or two about this youngster.

“I always look at a horse’s head before anything else,” Beiler says. “When I looked in his eye, I saw class. We did have to cut him because he was a little studdy, but he’s always been good training, good feeling. He wants to do it.”

Does he think Kosher Harmony, whose win came in an overnight event, can step up to sires-stake company?

“I don’t know,” Belier says, “but he’s sort of like a dream come true. When you’re in the horse business, you have to go through a lot of horses to get your big one. Maybe he’s my big one.”

If there’s such a thing as Jewish-Irish luck, it held for Kosher Mahoney in the draw. The two most-formidable-looking colts in the field already have three victories between them and more than $65,000 in combined earnings. But both Global Pandemic (post 2, Yannick Gingras) and Keg Stand (post 5, Dexter Dunn) drew into the second PASS division, race 10.