Orville Clarke, Freelance Writer
SI MI TRIAL (right) with Wesley Henry in the saddle is home ahead of hot favourite, CLOCK WORK, (Charles Hussey) in last Saturday's third race at Caymanas Park. Both horses are trained by Wayne DaCosta. - Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer
The mushrooming Pick-9 eluded punters for an eighth consecutive raceday at Caymanas Park on Saturday, ensuring a whopping $5.8 million carryover going into tomorrow's mid-week meet.
With so much at stake, Pick-9 fever should hit Caymanas Park from early and a payout of close to $8 million looks a real possibility.
Pick-9 sales went through the roof on Saturday and it should be even more intense tomorrow as the deep pocket bettors step up in a big way.
A spokesman for CTL said the only regret was that the carryover did not exceed $6 million as many were anticipating.
"Sales were good by any stan-dards but the fact that the 12-race programme facilitated two Super-6s instead of one caused some fallout in the Pick-9. But, things will be different on Wednesday and if it continued to prove elusive, the pot could begin to rival or even surpass the lotto," he said.
With the fancied horses basically holding their down going into the 12th and final race, several punters were sitting pretty with eight winners, before the little fancied CRUSADER'S RALLY at 19-1 upset calculations by romping the conditional event for maiden three-year-olds.
Trained by Garrett Arscott, who has been doing pretty well with his string of horses lately, the lightly raced CRUSADER'S RALLY provided the apprentice, Harriston Lewis, with his first career win. Another recent Jockeys' School graduate, Jason Simpson, also chalked up his first success aboard 4-1 chance LATIN KING in the second race.
The Pick-9 races produced only two winning favourites in RED RIVER CAT at evens in the sixth race and TOTAL MOTION at 4-5 in the 10th for the Ossie Steele Memorial Cup. Both won very easily and TOTAL MOTION, in particular, was widely used as a banker.
While the favourites failed to dominate, horses such as LADY INDIRA (2-1), NAVAJOJOE (3-2), KYSHA BABY (5-2), MOST WANTED (5-2) and even the sparingly raced KINGSTONIAN at 3-1, had their share of supporters before CRUSADER'S RALLY crashed the party.
