Page 6 - Ron Cushing News Today

Fewer than 10 per cent of the horses racing on Saturday (June 5) at Cumberland have won their last start. Sixty-five per cent of them, however, hit the board in their last two outings. This makes for competitive racing as well as attractive opportunities for punters on the 10-race card. The only sprint on the day’s program with fewer than seven horses entered is the featured conditioned trot, with six programmed starters vying for a $4,800 purse in the afternoons opener. Looking for his secon...

Ron Cushing steered Rock Diamonds N to a nose victory over Twomacsoneshadow to capture the $6,000 Winners Over feature in 1:55.2 at Cumberland on a special Wednesday afternoon card. The winning time was the fastest of the season at the new First Tracks Cumberland meet, and gave driver/co-owner Ron Cushing his first win over the Southern Maine surface this season. Trained by Heidi Gibbs and co-owned with Kevin Sywyk, the eight-year-old son of Rocknroll Hanover has now hit the board six times in ...

Duplicated N has suddenly become peerless at Plainridge Park after handily tackling the best resident pacers in the $20,000 winners-over handicap pace on Monday afternoon to extend his current winning streak to three. It was pretty much a done-deal from the start as Duplicated N (Bruce Ranger) took control off the gate and never looked back. With Starznheaven (Drew Monti) tripping out on his back, Duplicated N toured the facility in fractions of :27.2, :55.4 and 1:23.1 with little resistance fr...

After a win and a second in the top pacing class at Saratoga Raceway, Artful Way tried that same level at Plainridge last week and fell short in a gallant closing brush. This week he would not be denied after putting in a gutsy effort to win the $15,000 Winners-Over featured pace at Plainridge Park on Monday afternoon. Artful Way (Jay Randall) got away third in the short but select field of five as Some Waratah A (Greg Merton) was the commander of fractions. The race proceeded in single file pa...

After hitting the board five consecutive times heading into today’s action, Pammy Jo scored her first victory of 2021 in Thursday’s $15,000 Open Handicap pace for fillies and mares at Plainridge Park. Pammy Jo (Shawn Gray) left from post four and tucked in behind a hard-charging The Fun Marshall (Bruce Ranger) then remained there for the first half of the race. After a swift :26.1 first quarter and :55.3 half, Gray pulled Pammy Jo at the five-eighths only to be quickly rebuffed back to the ...

Plainridge Park’s trainer of the year in 2020 wasted no time flexing her muscle on the opening day of the track’s 2021 meet. Melissa Beckwith sent newly acquired Keystone Dakota to post in the $15,000 conditioned pacing feature for five-year-olds and under and the son of Art Major-Keystone Dawn responded with a win and a new lifetime mark in his first start at Plainridge. Despite drawing post eight in the full field of starters, driver Bruce Ranger sent Keystone Dakota right to the front an...

Pandemic-related travel bans remain in place for large swaths of the world -- including the key sending countries of China and Brazil -- meaning that unless something changes, students from those countries would have to transit through a third country and spend two weeks there before arriving in the U.S. The American Council on Education has joined with about 40 other higher education organizations in appealing to the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security to prioritize processing stud...