Monti extends driving lead with five bagger

Batavia, NY — Batavia Downs’ leading driver, Drew Monti, won five of the 11 races on Thursday (Aug. 27) evening to extend his victory advantage for the harness racing meet. 

Monti won with Cash Back (1:56.3, $5.72), Naked Truth (1:57.3, $6.06), RC Enterprise (1:59.4, $11.70), Baby Yoda (2:00, $11.40) and Actor Hanover (1:58.3, $5.08), who completed his five-bagger for the evening.

Monti also had three seconds from his 10 drives, giving him a stellar .667 UDR for the program. Now with 40 wins for the meet, Monti sits 14 wins ahead of both Shawn Gray (26) and Dave McNeight III (26) for the summer/fall dash title.

The $8,000 conditioned pace was an exciting race on the card that was won by Saulsbrook Ian (Brett Macdonald), who sat third to the half behind Colton’s Charm (Drew Monti) and Solar Solution (Leon Bailey) as they reached that station in :57.3. Kilowatt Kid N (Joe Chindano Jr.) pulled first-over at that point and Saulsbrook Ian followed to three-quarters. Positions remained unchanged through the last turn until Macdonald tipped Saulsbrook Ian three-high coming into the lane and passed the leaders, while out-pacing the sharp-closing Solar Solution to win by a nose in 1:56.2.

SAULSBROOK IAN REPLAY

Saulsbrook Ian ($6.08) is owned by his driver, Brett Macdonald, in partnership with Katie Remmerswaal and Shen Guo. Ronald Macdonald was the winning trainer.

Cassie Russo had two winners to lead all trainers on Thursday.

The $7,500 guaranteed pool in the Pick-5 wager made several bettors very happy as the combination of 5/4/1/4/1 returned $1,167.80 for the 50-cent bet.

Live racing will resume at Batavia Downs on Saturday (Aug 29) and please note that post time has been moved up to 4 p.m. from this Saturday until Saturday, September 5, due to a lighting issue that will be addressed during that time.

Free full card past performance programs for every live card of racing at Batavia Downs can always be downloaded at the track’s website (bataviadownsgaming.com) under the “Live Racing” tab. And you can watch all the races live as they happen for free on the Batavia Downs YouTube page.

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

by Tim Bojarski, for Batavia Downs