Last year’s freshman Cardinal pacing champion You Never Can Tell (Casey Leonard) will compete for trainer Tom Simmons in his second racing season. (Four Footed Fotos) 



By Mike Paradise for the I.H.A.A.

 Filling an Illinois harness racing card has been problematic for the last few years for the Hawthorne Race Office, and it won’t get any easier this time around with the loss of another solid stable that had been Prairie State bound for the last 19 years.

 “I won’t be coming up to Illinois this year,” revealed veteran trainer Herman Wheeler. “My Illinois breds have been dispersed to other trainers,” added the likable Monroe, Louisiana native who first arrived in Illinois back in 2005 when he started just five horses.

 Two years later Wheeler was a Super Night winning conditioner when his 20-1 longshot My Birthday, driven by a youthful 26-year-old Jamaica Patton, captured the $120,000 Lady Ann Reed trotting championship at Balmoral Park.

 In 2015 Herman developed the ICF 2-Year-old Colt Trotter of the Year Fox Valley Qatar, a multiple stakes champion when he won 8 of 9 freshman starts and earned over $84,000. As a 3-year-old, the son of Pizzazzed finished third or better in 12 of 14 trips to the gate for the Wheeler stable, prevailing in a division of the Cardinal.

 Last year was another productive season in Illinois for Wheeler. He sent out 95 starters and they hauled in over $200,000 with his two-year-olds You Never Can Tell and Shady Maple Alstar both finishing their juvenile campaigns with triumphs in their respective Cardinal pace or trot divisions.

 This season as a three-year-old You Never Can Tell will race for veteran Illinois trainer Tom Simmons. The Somestarsomewhere progeny qualified in 1:56 flat on May 2nd at Springfield. Shady Maple Alstar has joined the barn of trainer Mike Brink.

 Last November Hawthorne had to cut back to two nights of racing instead of the three allocated to them by the Illinois Racing Board because of insufficient entries and it stayed that way through their six-week winter meet that concluded in mid-February.

 Rain, Rain, Stay Away: They’ll redraw last weekend’s scheduled Spring Preview tomorrow (Wednesday) morning that was postponed because of rain in Springfield. A total of $60,000 in purse money will be distributed Saturday to ICF pacers or trotters, ages three and upward. First post on the non-wagering program is 11 am.

 Nineteen races were needed to put together the rained-out program, sponsored by the Illinois Department of Agriculture, and it’s likely we’ll see a similar number of events carded on Saturday, weather permitting.

 With four days before Saturday’s second scheduled Spring Preview, Springfield weathermen are now forecasting a 40 per cent chance of rain and as Illinois horsemen know full-well, with its all-dirt racing surface and strictly a dirt base, it doesn’t take much prescription to make the Illinois Fair Grounds track unsafe and untraceable.