Saturday’s nine-race card at Canterbury Park, the final of a 54-day season, begins at 4:10 p.m. CT. A total of 105 horses, 11.66 average per race, have been entered.
Two Pick 5s, beginning in races 1 and 5, will be offered. The take out is an industry-low 10 percent. As it is the last day of the season, the Pick 5s are mandatory payouts.
Jockey Luis Fuentes is poised to win the thoroughbred riding title, his first at Canterbury. He enters Saturday with a five-win lead over Serafin Carmona and six over Eduardo Gallardo. Fuentes has four scheduled mounts while Carmona and Gallardo both ride the card.
Mac Robertson will be crowned training champion for the 16th time. He has 45 wins from 200 starters, 16 wins more than Jose Silva, Jr. Robertson has entered 12 horses across the program.
Joe Novogratz, a long-time client of Robertson, is the leading owner with 15 wins. Johhny Taboada is second with 13 but has no entries on closing day.
– Kevin Gorg will call the races with Angela Hermann handling on-camera handicapping. Regular race caller Paul Allen is also the radio voice of the Minnesota Vikings and will be traveling east to Wisconsin to call the Packers rivalry.
– Trainer Bernell Rhone will be saddling his last horse on Saturday. His recently announced retirement came as a bit of a surprise to Canterbury denizens – not because
he has not earned it but because he has been a fixture at Canterbury Park and Canterbury Downs before that. Rhone brought the first horse onto the grounds at the Downs in 1985, the advent of pari-mutuel racing in Minnesota. Rhone has started more horses at the Shakopee racetrack than any other trainer and is second in all-time wins and earnings.