Take Your Pick gritty when winning at Pocono

WILKES-BARRE PA – Favored Take Your Pick (JK Endofanera) picked to race on the front end, then held off a game challenge from Kiss My Cheek to win the $17,000 featured pace for harness racing mares in 1:53.3 on a warmer Monday afternoon at Pocono Downs at Mohegan Pennsylvania.

Bee Okay A strung out the winning daughter of JK Endofanera past a :27.1 quarter, then yielded, and George Napolitano Jr. (who had five winners on the 15-race card, all within the last eight races) was able to give the chalk a breather to a :56.3 half. The third quarter saw the tempo pick up with a tailwind, and Bee Okay A making a break midstretch, allowing the third place-sitting Kiss My Cheek to circle to the pocket before a 1:24.3 three-quarters, then move out in the stretch to challenge. The race came down to these two, with Take Your Pick battling hard to defeat her rival by a neck for trainer Jeff Cullipher and Pollack Racing LLC as she won for the third time in her last four starts.

TAKE YOUR PICK REPLAY

The Chapter Seven gelding Chapolier became the first horse to become a double winner at the meet in triumphing for driver Simon Allard, trainer Mark Akins, and A 1 Racing. This victory came in 1:55.3, showing the vastly-better racing situation awaiting Chapolier than when he won in 2:02 in harsh weather conditions; the veteran was also claimed out of this $16,000 contest for a $25,000 price. Pacer Laurie Lee later became the first of her gait to win twice in 2025 at The Downs.

A $15,000 contest for claiming handicap trotters saw the Whom Shall I Fear gelding Kaboomski make a pace-controlling move going under the wire the first time and then striding off to a convincing victory in 1:58.1. Tyler Buter had the sulky duties for trainer Kevin Reynolds Jr., co-owner with Kevin Reynolds.

A conditioned group of trotters raced for $15,000, and driver Tyler Buter won this event as well with Waverly Hanover, a daughter of Swan For All who scored in 1:57.3. Waverly Hanover sat in the pocket behind frontstepping Craft Made, then caught that rival late to earn the half-length victory for trainer/owner Todd Buter.

Pocono will go to a Saturday-Monday-Tuesday schedule starting in March, with racing on each card starting at 1 p.m. Saturday’s program has a fast-class pace for $25,000, with Brue Hanover and Spring Inhis Step A, 1-2 last week, being joined by the double millionaire Charlie May. There will also be seven $17,000 divisions of the second preliminary of the Game Of Claims Series, with the entrants valued this week at $27,500; the fifth race looks the toughest as it matches three first-round winners, including Genius Man, the only first-round winner who was claimed out of his GOC contest.

Drivers wearing some basic shade of red and white have won 27 of the first 43 races at the meet: Jason Bartlett and George Napolitano Jr. (9 each), Ridge Warren (4), Matt Kakaley (3), and Anthony Napolitano (2).

Free Pocono program pages are or will be available at www.phha.org.

For complete race results, click here: US Trotting results.

From the PHHA / Pocono Downs