Big purses highlight Bangor Raceway’s final summer date

What has already been an historic season for Bangor Raceway will become even more so this weekend as it closes out an expanded spring-summer season.

A week after its first match race – also the track’s first male vs. female race – Bangor Raceway is set for another historic first with its two biggest trot and pace purses ever: The $10,000 Anah Temple Shrine Trot (sixth race) and the $20,000 Paul Bunyan Invitational (11th) on Sunday.

“I think these are the largest purses ever raced for at Bangor,” said Bangor Raceway director of racing Fred Nichols. “Certainly these are the largest purses offered in my 10 years here.”

Nichols said the previous highs were $10,000 (regardless of race type). The previous high pace purse was last year’s Bunyan at $10,000 and the previous high for trotting was last year’s $5,000 Shrine race.

“This is a direct result of the slots [Hollywood Slots casino] revenue, which has pretty much doubled our purses this year,” Nichols explained.

The action at the betting windows Sunday could be doubled as well. The Bunyan is traditionally one of or the most heavily-bet races in Bangor’s season.

“It does, in fact, attract a lot of attention,” Nichols said. “It’s usually the biggest day of the year for us, [total] handle-wise and we get more betting action here, via off-track betting, and for simulcasting.”

It’s also Bangor’s biggest day of the year purse-wise. Sunday’s total purse for all 12 races is $60,000. An average race day purse, weekday or weekend, is $25,000, according to Nichols.

More than half of the Bunyan Invitational’s six-horse field is Maine-owned: No. 1 horse Pembroke Flex, owned by Bill Varney of Bangor; No. 3 Our First Falcon N, owned by Castine’s John Brophy; No. 4 The Boy N, owned by Gaetan Cloutier and Mary Jane Parker of Leeds; and No. 5 Kiwi Cam, owned by Scott Dillon of Anson.

The local favorite is Bangor Raceway regular and 7-year-old gelding The Boy N, who has run a best time of 1 minute, 55.4 seconds and will be driven by Shawn Gray. Pembroke Flex, driven by Heath Campbell, has raced at Bangor this season and also has a win at The Meadowlands in New Jersey with a time of 1:52.2.

The rest of the field includes No. 2 Chewy Gross and No. 6 Tarver Hanover. The 7-year-old Chewy Gross has six wins in 21 starts this year, has run a personal best of 1:52.0 (at Dover Downs), and has earned $539,772 – easily more than twice that of the next-highest earner in the field (Our First Falcon N with $288,000. Tarver Hanover, the likely favorite, is the unofficial New England champion with easy wins in his last three starts and a personal-best clocking of 1:50.4 (at The Meadowlands).

“Tarver Hanover also ran a sweepstakes race at Rockingham June 3 and finished sixth in an elite field,” said Nichols. “These horses basically wouldn’t ordinarily come here because of the purses, although two of the six have been here before, but this is a big race.”

Given the personal bests turned in by the members of this fast field, Bangor Raceway’s track record of 1:53.3, set by Lorryland Butler 11 years ago, is certainly in danger of being broken.

The festivities start with the annual Anah Temple Shrine Parade, which begins at 12:30 p.m. Sunday and takes place at the Bangor Historic Track.

Post time for the start of racing action is 1:30 p.m.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 and at aneff@bangordailynews.net