Breeders Crown races coming to Pocono Downs in October

PLAINS TWP. — Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs has plenty of changes in store for the 2010 harness racing season.

The most noticeable might be the jumbo video screen that will be added to the infield some time after the season begins on Tuesday night.

Still the biggest happening at the track this year will be the 2010 Breeders Crown races set for Oct. 9. The Breeders Crown is a series of 12 championship races that carries $7 million in purse money, and this year will mark the first time that all of the races will be conducted on a single night.

Elimination races for the Breeders Crown will take place a week earlier, and also will be held at Pocono Downs.

“We have a great quality of racing and we’re pleased to be hosting the Breeders Crown,” said Mohegan Sun Chief Operating Officer Bobby Soper. “This is going to be one of the biggest events in the history of harness racing.”

The Breeders Crown is expected to attract Pilgrim’s Taj, who won the 2-year-old Breeders Crown Trot last year, and Sportswriter, the leading top 2-year-old pacer in 2009.

The event will be on national television and also will be broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio.

According to Soper, the track plans to install a state-of-the-art video board that will be placed atop the infield toteboard, as well as some landscaping changes to the infield.

Other racing highlights on the include the $300,000 Max Hempt Memorial for 3-year-old pacers on May 2, and full week of Grand Circuit racing from July 6-12.

The richest Breeders Crown events races will be the 2-year-old trot and 2-year-old pace, along with the open pace for aged horses. Each will be worth $600,000.

“We’re excited about bringing the Breeders Crown to Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs,” said Tom Charters, president of the Hambletonian Society, which conducts the event. “There were several tracks that put in bids for our races in 2010, as well as next year, but we decided on Pocono Downs. Next year’s races will be held at Woodbine in Canada.”

Charters is especially proud that the Breeders Crown is coming to Pocono Downs, because he first came to the track in 1972 as a groom for Delvin Miller, who entered a horse in a sire stakes race.

He is confident the Breeders Crown will attract the cream of the crop in every division of harness racing.

One major change for the new season will the abandonment of Saturday afternoon racing. The track will race four nights a week – Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday – with post time set for 6:30 p.m. During June, July and August, the track will race on Monday instead of Friday.