By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
Carryover Fever has hit Batavia Downs Gaming.
The Pick-5 wager has not been hit for four consecutive harness racing programs, prompting management to guarantee a track-record Pick 5 wagering pool of $35,000 on Friday night. First-race post time is 6 p.m.
The multi-race wager starts in Race 1 and ends in Race 5, and obviously has the potential for a hefty payoff if two or three long shots win along the way.
Even if the pool would only reach the guarantee, $30,000 still will be divided among all winning tickets. So even if there are $50 in winning combinations, that’s still $600 per winning $1 ticket.
The carryovers began Friday, apparently because of a $13.20 winner in the fourth race. There were no other double-digit winning prices in the sequence that night.
Saturday’s Pick-5 blew up because the No. 7 horse won the second race and paid $10, and the third-race winner paid $22.60.
There were plenty of tickets alive into Sunday’s final leg, but Drew Monti drove 41-1 long shot Pegasus Point to victory to extend the wager again.
That’s when Carryover Fever struck hard. More than $14,000 was wagered into the pool on Wednesday. Most of those handicappers, however, never even had a thrill.
Around 85 percent of all the Pick-5 tickets were turned into garage after the first leg, when Little Joke won at odds of 21-1. The 15 percent of bettors lucky enough to move on were blown out in race three by 25-1 bomb Missevil.
Friday’s sequence is by no means easy. The first race is a New York-sired Excelsior B event for 3-year-old filly trotters. Races 2 and 3 are fairly evenly matched overnight eventsmand race 4 is an Excelsior A.
The final leg is a $118,800 New York Sire Stakes event where Quincy Blue Chip will be favored, but she does show breaks in two of her past four races.
Free program pages for the Pick-5 races are available the U.S. Trotting website as part of the strategic wagering program.
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