Four Starzzz Shark, On The Attack set for Cane Pace Freehold Raceway hosting final on Monday

Staff Writer

By tim morris

Four Starzzz Shark, On The Attack set for Cane Pace
Freehold Raceway hosting final on Monday

Four Starzzz Shark and On The Attack took different but successful paths to victory in their respective $57,616 divisions of the $345,694 Cane Pace eliminations at Freehold Raceway Saturday.

Their wins make them the horses to beat when the 47th running of the Cane Pace is held at historic Freehold Raceway on Monday. It is the first leg of pacing’s Triple Crown.

Four Starzzz Shark, a son of Cam’s Card Shark, was very impressive in going wire-to-wire. From the fifth post position, driver David Miller took his colt straight to the front and set some withering fractions that destroyed the field one by one. Four Starzzz Shark won by four lengths in 1:53.3, after doing the first quarter in 27.1, the half in 55.2 and three quarters in 1:24.

Among the victims of the Four Starzzz Shark’s quick pace was prerace favorite Fully Loaded, driven by Luc Ouellette. Ouellette tried to get around Miller on the final backstretch, but Miller never surrendered the lead, parking the favorite on the outside. In the home stretch, as Fully Loaded gave up the chase, Four Starzzz Shark had the track to himself.

Miller knew he wasn’t taking the easiest path to the Cane final by taking the lead early, but experience told him that’s the way his colt likes its best.

"I’ve driven him four times," Miller explained. "He seems to do his best work on the front end. I knew it would be tough cutting the mile, but I figured we would go for the front and go down swinging."

No need to worry on Miller’s part, Four Starzzz Shark had things under control en route to his eighth win of the season.

JK Bandit (Ross Wolfenden), Lotsa Clout (Stephane Bouchard) and Royal Art (Ron Pierce) finished second through fourth place, grabbing the all-important qualifying slots for the Cane final.

The second division of the Cane Pace eliminations featured the explosive closing speed of On The Attack, the son of Jate Lobell, who had been accustomed to running up front until Saturday.

Bouchard tucked his colt, who started from the seven hole, behind Full Of Fun (Eric Ledford) from the start, and sat in his wake until the time to strike on the homestretch. Bouchard steered his colt to the outside, and a swift closing 28.1 last quarter beat Full Of Fun by a length. The winning time of 1:53.1 was the best of the two eliminations.

Gunthatownthewest (Pierce) and Keen Mind (Cat Manzi) got up for third and fourth respectively to gain the final qualifying spots for the final. Keen Mind used a 28.2 last quarter to move up from sixth to fourth place in the stretch. Bouchard liked what he saw from On The Attack.

"The Colt has just been getting better and better; last week he raced in 1:53.2," he pointed out. "I usually take him to the lead. This race proved he can race in the hole."

It was the 14th win of the 2001 campaign for On The Attack, a winner of the $557,000 Prix de Montreal.

Just as in the first division of the eliminations, the prerace favorite, LCB, finished out of the money and did not advance to Monday’s final.

Monday’s Cane Pace winner will be the only pacer with a chance to win the Triple Crown. The other two legs of the crown are the Little Brown Jug (Delaware Fairgrounds, Ohio) on Sept. 20 and the Messenger Stakes (Ladbroke at the Meadows, Pittsburgh) on Oct. 27. There have been nine pacers to win the Triple Crown over the years, among them are Niatross (1981), Most Happy Fella (1970) and Bret Hanover (1965).

Of the drivers in this year’s final, only Cat Manzi and Ron Pierce are former winners. Manzi, the current driving champion at Freehold Raceway, captured the Cane in 1996 with Scoot To Power, and Pierce took Blissful Hall into the winner’s circle in 1999.