Three allowances top Saturday card

Saturday’s 11-race program features three allowance/optional-claiming races, two of them carded on the grass, including a $61,000 test for older horses to be decided at 1 1/16 miles.

The main event lured a full field of 12, plus a pair of also-eligibles led by the Saffie Joseph Jr.-trained Mister Abarrio and the recently stakes-tested and much improved Anamnestic, who returns locally for the first time since January off a fourth-place finish behind five-time stakes winner Forever Souper in the Presque Isle Downs Mile. The race, oddly enough, was decided at 1 1/16 miles in track-record time.

Anamnestic also was second best behind Forever Souper, again over the synthetic course, in an overnight stakes five weeks earlier.

Mister Abarrio exits a third-place finish under similar conditions behind gate-to-wire winner Read On while matching a career-best 87 Beyer. That race came on the Tapeta, but Mister Abarrio appears just as good, if not better, on grass.

Other key contenders in the race are Happy Runner and Street Earnings, who returns on relatively short rest off a career-top performance when defeating statebred allowance/optional-claiming rivals by 2 3/4 lengths as an 18-1 outsider over the Tapeta here Sept. 28.

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