By John Sacco <\/p>\n
For the Observer-Reporter<\/p>\n
newsroom@observer-reporter.com <\/p>\n
Experience in anything can go a long way. <\/p>\n
In harness racing, though, much of it has to do with the horse and its abilities and speed. <\/p>\n
Chris Page not only has the experience of driving in The Adios Pace final but winning one. <\/p>\n
Page drove Bythemissal to victory in 2022. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s back today to try again to drive a Ron Burke trained 3-year-old pacer to Adios glory. <\/p>\n
Page will drive Rick Wink, another Burke conditioned pacer. He will leave from post No. 2 and while almost exclusively racing in Ohio, has won four-of-five races this season and 12-of-14 lifetime. He has earned $386,250. <\/p>\n
Rick Wink placed third in last week\u2019s Adios elimination race. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a similar situation,\u201d Page said, comparing 2022 with this year. \u201cHopefully, we can get the same outcome. Just because I won this before, I don\u2019t think it has any advantages. Each horse drives different and each race plays out a little bit different.\u201d <\/p>\n
Page said Rick Wink adding Lasix should make a positive impact <\/p>\n
\u201cHe made a big move last week and then late, he just kind of like evened out, so that\u2019s kind of like the tell-tale sign of a horse who might need the addition of the Lasix medication. They scoped him and found out that was the case. That\u2019s a plus and we got a good draw. <\/p>\n
\u201cI really like where we are. It\u2019s all systems go.\u201d <\/p>\n
All in the Family <\/strong><\/p>\n The seventh race on The Adios day race card \u2013 the Dwane Parker Arden Downs 3-year-old Filly Trot \u2013 will feature the Parker-Bolon families. <\/p>\n Norm Parker \u2013 The late Dwane Parker\u2019s son \u2013 trains Backswing. <\/p>\n Rodney Bolon will drive and Kyle Bolon will drive Dianne Hanover. They are Dwane Parker\u2019s son-in-law and grandson, respectively. The horse\u2019s owner, Sally Bolon, is his daughter. <\/p>\n The Parker Family traditionally held a big celebration\/picnic\/party on the hill opposite the grandstand at The Meadows on Adios day. <\/p>\n However, Sally and Norm Parker said with the passing of their mother, Bobbie shortly after last year\u2019s Adios, the tradition has ended. <\/p>\n Sally plans to sit on that same hill with her sister, Kathy, just watching the races. Norm has work to do. He is sure to be emotional. <\/p>\n That\u2019s tied to another part of the race. <\/p>\n Wild Wild Western, a standout pacer for several years, will lead the field for Race 7 onto the track.\u202fIt will mark his final appearance on The Meadows\u2019 5\/8-mile oval.\u202fThe 9-year-old stallion last raced in November. The decision was recently made to retire him from racing.\u202f The son of Western Ideal currently stands at stud at Lindwood Farm in Greensburg, where he has been breeding mares part-time for the past three years while continuing to race. His first crop is now 2-year-olds, and one of that select group of first-year horses is Western Raptor, who has already taken a mark of 1:52.4 and has won two of his three races. <\/p>\n Wild Wild Western retires as one of the top Open pacers in recent Meadows\u2019 history, capturing 45 of 132 (.341 winning percentage) races with a mark of 1:48 and earnings of more than $723,000.\u202f The Meadows\u2019 Mike Wilder drove Wild Wild Western to 31 of his victories.\u202f <\/p>\n Western Raptor will compete in Race 10 in the \u201cTyler B\u201d $69,982 Pennsylvania Sire Stake 2-year-old Colt and Gelding Pace. <\/p>\n \u201c(Wild Wild Western) is the nicest all-around horse I\u2019ve ever trained,\u201d said Norm Parker. \u201cFrom manners to racing to everything.\u202f He is just a consistent, honest horse.\u202f In fact, the best compliment I\u2019ve ever gotten about him came from Ron Burke.\u202fWhen Wild Wild Western was at the top of his game in the Open pace, Ronnie said that he brought more than a dozen horses in here to try to knock him off the top, and he couldn\u2019t do it.\u202f He said Western was like the Foiled Again of The Meadows. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll get emotional over the family thing,\u201d Parker said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard anytime a horse leaves you. But it\u2019ll be a joyous kind of emotion. I think just knowing how special it was training him. The one other thing too is that his son is racing. We didn\u2019t have a very good race last week but that\u2019s horse racing and you just figure it out and move on. I mean it\u2019s going to be a busy day but it will be an exciting day.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Sacco For the Observer-Reporter newsroom@observer-reporter.com Experience in anything can go a long way. In harness racing,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-292256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114917395936648061","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}