First Hanover Lures Canadian Champ (07/013/10)

Posted Tuesday, July 13, 2010

                                                                 By Mike Paradise

  The first of this season’s eight Hanover stakes Wednesday night lured Mohawk’s Casual Breeze champion Action-Broadway to Balmoral Park. The Virgil Morgan trainee will head-up the first of two $19,700 divisions for three-year-old filly trotters.
 
  Five more Hanover’s will be sprinkled throughout this Saturday evening’s Balmoral card. Two more Hanover added money races for freshman will be contested in late October.

 Also on tap Wednesday is the $5,000 Physic Spirit stake for state-bred trotting colts and geldings. Eleven youngsters will tangle in the second race of eleven on the program with most of the betting public likely putting their dough on either the Pamela Coleman trained entry of Powerful Position (Sam Widger), Powerful Charger (Todd Warren) and Powerful Tom (Casey Leonard) or the Homer Hochstetler Stable’s Fox Valley Iliad.

  Powerful Position and Fox Valley Iliad slugged it out in the slop in Balmoral’s Million Dollar Bye stake on June 23 with Iliad holding on for a neck decision in 2:04. Hochstetler turns over the colt’s lines to Indiana’s leading driver Peter Wrenn for the Psychic Spirit when the Vaporize colt and Graham-Coleman trio of Powerful Emotion youngsters take on Hammer Head, Trop Meister, Fox Valley Arrow, Detailer, Skippy Jim John, Fancy Creek River and Andy Cornholder.
 
  Action-Broadway (9-5 in the morning line) prepped for Wednesday’s Hanover with a quick 1:55.3 winning mile at The Meadows, a five-eighths track. Owned and bred by Kenneth Sommer of Sheffield, Ohio, the Broadway Hall filly was almost six lengths the best when she won the Casual Breeze with a fast 1:52.4 mile.

  In her freshman season she pulled down almost $130,000 in earnings and took the $200,000 PASS Final at The Meadows in late September. She also won an $84,373 PASS stake and one for $63,980 with Wednesday’s regular driver Brett Miller. While she made both the $525,800 Merrie Annabelle and $600,000 Breeders Crown Finals, she went off stride in both championships.

  Awaiting Action-Broadway (p.p. 8) are a number of local hopes including last year’s Illinois two-year-old champion Southern Belle (programmed 3-1), a winner of Balmoral’s last two state-bred stakes after joining the Gerald Hansen stable. Regular driver Brian Carpenter will guide her away from the two-slot in the seventh race co-feature.

  Rounding out the first Hanover are Fox Valley Sienna (Dave Avenatti), Vapor Girl (Lavern Hostelter), Escrow Blue Chip (Peter Wrenn), Fox Valley Click (Dale Hiteman), Miss Brody (Sam Widger) and Meghan’s Halfmoon (Mike Oosting).

 The eighth race second Hanover division has two more out-of-state imports that figure to get plenty of play—Ivan Sugg’s Yansky and Muscle Amour from the Dan Shetler Stable. Both are daughters of Muscles Yankee who have spent much of this season at The Meadowlands, mostly competing in New Jersey Sire Stakes,
 
 Yansky (3-1, Duke Sugg) is looking for her first season victory after eight tries. She did pick-up purse checks at The Big M in the $54,000 Windy Mare Final and a $21,400 NJSS event in May. As a freshman she took the $50,000 Green Acres NJSS stake at Freehold in 2:00.4.

  Muscle Amour (5-2, Dan Shetler) was bought for $42,000 by Parent Stable and Crystal Ball Stable of Ohio at the 2008 Harrisburg (PA) Sale. Her dam Angelina Hall had her first foal sell for $130,000 a year earlier and in 2009 her third daughter brought $160,000 at Lexington.

  Another invader in the second Hanover split his Rompaway Farm’s Rompaway Cami (8-1, Dave Magee), a 1:56.4 freshman winner at Colonial Downs.

  They’ll be challenged by five Illinois bred fillies—Fox Valley Ripple (Del Chupp), Powerful Bella (Marcus Miller), Easy Day Hooray (Brandon Bates), Riley Lynn (Sam Widger) and Claire’s Rose (Peter Wrenn).