Photo: Curtis Salonick
By: Jerry Connors, Jr.
WILKES-BARRE PA – Chapolier has now won every one of his nine 2025 starts at Pocono Downs at Mohegan Pennsylvania, making a hard trip from the outside post eight look easy as he won in 1:54.3 over a track rated sloppy.
Tyler Buter, the track’s leading driver, saw the many of the usual propsective opportunists leaving quickly inside him and settled the Chapter Seven gelding in fourth as Macmorris Hanover, favored in last week’s Game Of Claims Championship but this week 21-1 from post seven, hustled to the top in :27.4, then got a breather to the :57.4 half, at which point Chapolier and Buter went into grinding mode. The pair kept drawing closer and closer to the leader while covering his own third quarter in :27.3, reaching the three-quarters just a neck behind as the timer flashed in 1:26.1, with In My Dreams pocketsitting and hoping for some luck.
But Buter just kept feeding his horse racetrack and Chapolier just kept gobbling it up, narrowing the margin to a head at the stretch call and then drawing off by 2¾ lengths seemingly effortlessly, with In My Dreams another length back in third. All of the first three finishers were claimed out of the feature, for a total outlay for the trio of $85,000.
Chapolier has now been claimed seven times (total sum $198,000) during his winning streak, showing amazing adaptability to constantly-changing surroundings (five different trainers in all). Three times he has been haltered and then raced by P T Stable and trainer Chris Oakes, and he earned them $24,000 in his three wins, plus $5000 extra as he elevated in price. (He didn’t make the Game Of Claims final though winning a leg because the first two prelims were base-priced at $20,000 and $25,000, so he was kept out of those legs by other connections and thus became final-ineligible.) Chapolier now goes back to owner Rocco Stebbins, from whom P T / Oakes took him in his previous start; the horse has earned $70,000 in purses between February 17 and May 6 at Pocono.
Buter also won the day’s co-feature, a $15,000 claiming handicap trot for horses just below the feature prices. Again he rallied his horse to overcome the uncovered route; here it was 10-1 shot Rose Run Elegant, a Rose Run Hooligan gelding who won in 1:54.4 before the rains came (“fast” track) for trainer Susan Marshall, co-owner with John Marshall. Buter, who had three victories in all on Tuesday, completed the four-day week at Pocono with fourteen trips to the winners circle.
On Tuesday, though, he had to take a back seat to three-time defending Pocono driving champion Matt Kakaley, who brought home six winners, including four in a row midcard over three different ratings in surface as the rain came in. The first five Kakaley wins were each for different trainers, while the sixth was his second collaboration with trainer Travis Alexander, the only conditioning doubler on the day.
Racing resumes at Pocono on Saturday at 1 p.m., and the card will mark the start of the local stakes season for the best Pennsylvania-sired horses, as five $30,000 Pennsylvania All-Stars divisions of the “glamour boys,” the three-year-old pacing colts, kick off the local 2025 program. There will also be a carryover of $3015 into the first race Superfecta. After Saturday, there will be Pocono racing at 6 p.m. on Sunday, and then on Monday and Tuesday at 1 p.m. Free Pocono program pages are or will be available at www.phha.org.
WILKES-BARRE PA – Chapolier has now won every one of his nine 2025 starts at Pocono Downs at Mohegan Pennsylvania, making a hard trip from the outside post eight look easy as he won in 1:54.3 over a track rated sloppy.
Tyler Buter, the track’s leading driver, saw the many of the usual propsective opportunists leaving quickly inside him and settled the Chapter Seven gelding in fourth as Macmorris Hanover, favored in last week’s Game Of Claims Championship but this week 21-1 from post seven, hustled to the top in :27.4, then got a breather to the :57.4 half, at which point Chapolier and Buter went into grinding mode. The pair kept drawing closer and closer to the leader while covering his own third quarter in :27.3, reaching the three-quarters just a neck behind as the timer flashed in 1:26.1, with In My Dreams pocketsitting and hoping for some luck.
But Buter just kept feeding his horse racetrack and Chapolier just kept gobbling it up, narrowing the margin to a head at the stretch call and then drawing off by 2¾ lengths seemingly effortlessly, with In My Dreams another length back in third. All of the first three finishers were claimed out of the feature, for a total outlay for the trio of $85,000.
Chapolier has now been claimed seven times (total sum $198,000) during his winning streak, showing amazing adaptability to constantly-changing surroundings (five different trainers in all). Three times he has been haltered and then raced by P T Stable and trainer Chris Oakes, and he earned them $24,000 in his three wins, plus $5000 extra as he elevated in price. (He didn’t make the Game Of Claims final though winning a leg because the first two prelims were base-priced at $20,000 and $25,000, so he was kept out of those legs by other connections and thus became final-ineligible.) Chapolier now goes back to owner Rocco Stebbins, from whom P T / Oakes took him in his previous start; the horse has earned $70,000 in purses between February 17 and May 6 at Pocono.
Buter also won the day’s co-feature, a $15,000 claiming handicap trot for horses just below the feature prices. Again he rallied his horse to overcome the uncovered route; here it was 10-1 shot Rose Run Elegant, a Rose Run Hooligan gelding who won in 1:54.4 before the rains came (“fast” track) for trainer Susan Marshall, co-owner with John Marshall. Buter, who had three victories in all on Tuesday, completed the four-day week at Pocono with fourteen trips to the winners circle.
On Tuesday, though, he had to take a back seat to three-time defending Pocono driving champion Matt Kakaley, who brought home six winners, including four in a row midcard over three different ratings in surface as the rain came in. The first five Kakaley wins were each for different trainers, while the sixth was his second collaboration with trainer Travis Alexander, the only conditioning doubler on the day.
Racing resumes at Pocono on Saturday at 1 p.m., and the card will mark the start of the local stakes season for the best Pennsylvania-sired horses, as five $30,000 Pennsylvania All-Stars divisions of the “glamour boys,” the three-year-old pacing colts, kick off the local 2025 program. There will also be a carryover of $3015 into the first race Superfecta. After Saturday, there will be Pocono racing at 6 p.m. on Sunday, and then on Monday and Tuesday at 1 p.m. Free Pocono program pages are or will be available at www.phha.org.
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