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| Adam Coglianese |
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NYRA's Bill Nader (center) poses with Belmont's DRF/NTRA NHC V qualifiers (L-R) Patrick Ingram, John Russo, Joseph Mariconda, and Mark Fisher.
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For the second year in a row, a retired police officer took the top prize in Belmont Park's Handicapping Challenge. This year's winner was Joseph Mariconda, formerly of Staten Island but now residing in Freehold, New Jersey, who earned first-prize of $25,000 and also qualified for the Daily Racing Form/NTRA National Handicapping Championship V to be held Jan. 23-24, 2004 at Bally's - Las Vegas.
The two-day event attracted a full field of 205 entrants who hailed from 11 states. The contest cost $300 to enter and offered a purse of $61,500 with all entry fees being returned to the top 20 finishers in the form of prize money.
Mariconda finished the tournament with a final contest-winning bankroll of $927 based on nine mythical $20 wagers and one $40 best bet per day on each day of the contest. All bets were win, place, or show, and the tracks in play were Belmont and Monmouth.
The top four finishers in the Belmont Handicappng Challenge all earned berths in next January's National Handicapping Championship V. Joining Mariconda in Las Vegas will be second-, third-, and fourth-place finishers Patrick Ingram, a banker from Queens, N.Y., John Russo, an ice cream supplier from New York, and Mark Fisher, a lawyer from New York. Engram, Russo, and Fisher earned prize money of $8,000, $5,000, and $4,000 repectively.
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