Early Start, Early Close for Finale (12/31/11)

  Balmoral Park has moved up its first post both Saturday and Sunday to 6:30 pm and reduced the New Year’s Eve card from 13 races to 11 and added an 11th and 12th race to the Sunday program.

  The Crete, IL track has a scheduled 10 o’clock post on the last race Saturday in an effort to get their program over so its patrons can go out and find another facility to celebrate the New Year arriving at midnight.

  Since the December 31 card is the last of 2011 it necessitated mandatory payouts on Balmoral’s Pick 4, Pick 5, High 5 and the last Superfecta (race 10) on the Saturday card.

  The Pick 4 as a guaranteed $15,000 pool and the wager starts with race 8 and goes through race 11; The High 5 is on race 11. The Pick 5 covers races 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

  Saturday’s feature is a $17,000 Invitational Handicap Pace with the lone horse “handicapped” Dabestleaderever with the outside 7-post. The Erin Elliott trainee is the 2-1 morning line favorite to notch his 16th win of the season and his 4th in his last 5 starts since he shipped back to Balmoral in early December.

  He’s beaten Well To Do Guru 2 of the last 3 times they’ve met and Dabestleaderever doesn’t have the Illinois bred champ to take on Saturday night. His challengers are Dontgetbyme (8-1, John Delong), Onhishonor Hanover (10-1, Mike Oosting), Camgrandest (5-1, Eric Carlson), Major Monet (6-1, Casey Leonard), Born To Rockn Roll (6-1, Todd Warren) and Star City Hero (7-2, Sam Wider), all horses he’s whipped in recent races.

  The 7-slot isn’t much of a handicap since Dabestleaderever does his best racing coming from behind and the Cambest offspring only has 6 horses to pass up.

  “I was obviously happy to see the guys going at it pretty hard through most of the race in the last Invite,” said the horse’s driver Marcus Miller. “Those fractions set things up for us to have a good shot at winning it.”

  Well To Do Guru was pushed through fractions of :27.1, :55 flat and 1:23.3 before he gave way to Dabestleaderever in the 1:51.4 mile for owner Tim Towne of Mundelein, IL.