Meadowlands: Championship meet kicks off this weekend

The Meadowlands Championship Meet kicks off this weekend with the start of Grand Circuit racing over the mile oval with the 2018 stakes season getting underway on Kentucky Derby Day, Saturday, May 5.

The Arthur Cutler Memorial trot annually kicks off stakes season and that is again the case as a field of 12 trotters with combined career earnings of nearly $9 million will race this edition over the distance of 1 1/8 miles for a purse of $182,500.

2017 Dan Patch Horse of the Year Hannelore Hanover (Yannick Gingras) makes her seasonal debut in the race coming into it off a pair of scintillating qualifiers for owners Burke Racing, Weaver Bruscemi, Frank Baldachino and the J&T Silva stable. She will start in the second tier from post 12 in the seventh race on the card.

Trainer Ron Burke has entered four in the Cutler with Crazy Wow (post 6), Gural Hanover (post 1) and In Secret (post 7) joining Hannelore in the field.

Adding to the intrigue on the Derby Day card will be a pair of $50,000 divisions of the first leg for the Graduate Series on the pace. An overflow box of 23 4-year-olds were declared for the stake and those two races will also be contested at the route distance of 1 1/8 miles.

Trainer Ron Burke is again well represented by four entrants, among those 2017 Little Brown Jug winner Filibuster Hanover who qualified this past Saturday like a horse that’s ready for anything.

-edited release (Meadowlands)