Bangor Raceway’s extended race meet is winding down and has only five days remaining to be raced on its 29-date extended meet. Sunday is Shrine Trot Day on Bangor Raceway’s 12-race program and it is the track’s biggest family entertainment package of the meet thus far.

On Shrine Trot Day, Bangor Raceway will feature a huge Shrine parade and the Annual Anah Temple Shrine Trot. Additionally, it will also feature two divisions of the Billings Classic Amateur Driving Championship Series XIX.

At 12:45 p.m. Sunday, units of the Anah Temple Shrine will kick off the busy 12-race program with a giant parade. More than 25 units will parade around the historic Bass Park’s half-mile oval in the only full Anah Shrine parade in eastern Maine this summer.

Mini-bikes, go-carts, miniature race cars and giant 4 by 4 units will perform on the track and thrill race fans as they speed, spin and maneuver. Additionally, bagpipers, horse patrol, brass bands, clowns and several marching units will parade the half-mile distance at a much slower pace than their motorized counterparts.

Anah Potentate, Donald W. Maxim of Thorndike, will step-off the parade precisely at 12:45 p.m. There is no admission.

“Over the years, Anah Temple Shriners have entertained millions of people across Maine and Canada as well as here at the raceway. The Shriners are the kind of family entertainment Bangor Raceway is proud to present to the public,” Fred Nichols, raceway manager, said.

Also, what may be a first for Bangor Raceway will take place. Never in recent memory has six of the seven trotters in the Shrine Trot been Maine owned and all seven entries have lifetime marks of two minutes or less.

It wouldn’t be a great stretch of the imagination to think that the Bangor Raceway trotting mark of two minutes flat, set by Paul Mullen’s West Ridge Gossip in 1997, may be in some serious jeopardy.

The seven trotters in for the 11th race, $3,500 Shrine Trot, in order of position on the gate, drivers, (minus two) owners, hometowns and lifetime best times, are:

Pine Magic, Kim Ireland, Lew Hayden, Poteet, Texas, (a Maine native) 1:59.3; Dreamy Freckles, John Davidson, Ronald Ralph, Waldoboro, 1:58.3; Captain E P, TBA, Edward Reynolds, Bangor, 2:00;

Collier St. John, Steve Mahar, Lorraine Hayden, Starks, 1:57.3; Super Sibyl, Valerie Grondin, Bangor, William Varney, Bangor, 1:57.4; Rocky Mountain N, TBA, No Worry Stables, N.Y., 1:58.2 and John Lee Hooker, Chris Long, John Brophy, Castine, 1:56.2

Bangor Raceway will again host two trotting divisions of the Billings Classic Amateur Driving Championship Series XIX. The CKG Billing is named for Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, one of the greatest sportsmen, in the true sense of the word, and an “amateur” driver of Standardbreds.

Twelve amateur driver, including Malvern Burroughs, winner of the 1997 Hambletonian at The Meadowlands in 1:55 with his trotter, Malabar Man, are scheduled to return to Bangor Raceway. In 1998, Burroughs won The Shrine Trot in 2:05, driving Warren Moon, a 5-year-old son of Super Bowl, over a heavy track.

Unable to make last year’s Shrine Trot because of scheduling conflicts, Burroughs returns to Bangor looking for another victory sitting behind one of Maine’s best Maine Sire Stakes trotters, Mic Mac Jack, in the assigned post-positioned five hole in the eighth race.

The Delvin Miller Amateur Drivers Association of Goshen, N.Y., sponsor of the Billings Classic, currently has a roster of more than 100 drivers who qualify for “amateur status,” including Burroughs. The amateur driving series began at Monticello Raceway in mid-May and ends at Pompano Park in late October with 32 stops at racetracks in 11 states and Canada.

The Billings is open to drivers who qualify as an “amateur.” To meet the qualifications, he or she must be a member of the Delvin Miller ADA and be licensed by the USTA (or CTA) and local and state racing commissions. To maintain their amateur status, any licensed reinsman must not have accepted money as a driver in the past 10 years.

All proceeds from The Billings are donated to the Harness Racing Museum in Goshen, N.Y. Last year, amateur Billings point champion was Gregg Keidel, director of racing at Northfield Park.