Oh Marvelous Me collared Lord Walton in the final furlong and rolled to a 2¾-length victory Saturday in the featured Muckleshoot Casino Purse on opening night of the live racing season at Emerald Downs.<\/p>\n
For trainer Blaine Wright, the victory capped a two-win night that included an 11¾-length victory by Lofty Cause in race three. Wright, 42, captured his first Emerald Downs title last year with 39 wins and a meet-best 28.6 win percentage.<\/p>\n
Ridden by Jose Zunino, Oh Marvelous Me ran 5½ furlongs in 1:03.17 on a fast track and paid $5.40, $3.40 and $2.60. A 5-year-old Bluegrass Cat gelding bred in Kentucky, Oh Marvelous Me is 2-2-1 in 11 career starts and earned $6,215 on Saturday for owners Todd and Shawn Hansen of Tenino.<\/p>\n
Lord Walton, ridden by Javier Matias, held second and paid $4.80 and $3.60. A tall 4-year-old gelding by Ready’s Image, Lord Walton missed the break slightly but zipped to the lead inside and carved blazing fractions of :21.77, :44.69 and :56.77 before yielding to the winner.<\/p>\n
Cause I’m Bad, Lorenzo Lopez riding, rallied for third place and paid $2.60 to show, while Commander King, Wando Cat and Ryan Walt rounded out the order of finish.<\/p>\n
Live racing continues Sunday with first post 2 p.m., and the new Clubhouse Casino is open 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily. The 70-day season runs through Sunday, Sept. 17.<\/p>\n
Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n Bob Is Back ($9) and Eliska Kubinova prevailed in the 2017 season opener in 1:05.36 for 5 ½ furlongs. The 5-year-old winner is owned and trained by John Maloney, while for Kubinova it was her first win here in two years. … Zunino was the only jockey to ride two winners – sweeping the late double with Oh Marvelous Me and longshot Kalakala ($31.60). …Longshots fared well as Endangered ($14) prevailed in race two, Chatty Carl ($18.20) in race four, K K’s Wonderwoman ($12.80) in race six and Kalakala in race seven. … The $0.50 Pick 5 paid a healthy $5,793.65, and there were no winners in the $0.50 Pick 7 and the carryover to Sunday is $3,080. … Both the $0.50 Pick 5 and $0.50 Pick 7 have a reduced 15 percent takeouts this year. … Third-race winner Lofty Cause ($2.40) became the meet’s first claim, going to Ed and Fran Barber for $8,000 with Terry Gillihan the new trainer. … Jeff Metz, who had a three-year title run ended last year by Wright, scored an opening night upset with Chatty Carl under Eswan Flores in race four. … Two-time Longacres Mile winner Stryker Phd is possible for the $100,000 San Francisco Mile at Golden Gate Fields on Saturday, April 29. The SF Mile is a grade 3 at one mile on turf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh Marvelous Me collared Lord Walton in the final furlong and rolled to a 2¾-length victory Saturday in the featured Muckleshoot Casino Purse on opening night of the live racing season at Emerald Downs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":27673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-27666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27666"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}