Okay, this is starting to look like a ball game that neither side wants, even though the stakes are exceptionally appealing.
Canterbury Park will start the Friday night card with a $67,322 pick six carryover
Ninety percent of Thursday night’s pick six players were knocked out after the first race _ by an 8-1 choice named EZ Otto.
There were 27,041 tickets, on track and off, when the pick six got under way with a $90,174 pot at stake. With only two races run, a scant 94 tickets were still alive, the rest knocked off by EZ Otto and, in the fourth race, a $12 horse named Katie’s Smart.
In one case, a $4,000 ticket was doomed after Adolfo Morales brought EZ Otto home.
Eric Halstrom, Canterbury’s vice president of racing operations, says there is a reasonable chance the pot could reach $150,000 for tonight’s card, once out-of-state players check in.
“There’s going to be a lot of out-state betting,” he said. “Yesterday we had $39,000 on track and $15,000 out of state, but tonight could be much different. If that kicks in, we could go past $150,000.”
Halstrom said that tonight’s carryover is the largest since 1999 when the pot reached almost $100,000, thanks to a snafu in the program, which failed to mention an equipment change on a longshot shipper, as Halstrom recalls, from Lone Star Park.
“It was the first year we went to the dollar pick six,” Halstrom said. “Even though we tried promoting it, many people were still betting $2.”
There was a pick six carryover of around $50,000 that time. “It came down to the last race, a 12-horse field of maidens,” Halstrom said. “The No. 12 horse had shipped in and was the only horse not covered on a ticket.”
The horse had blinkers on for the race, a fact not covered in the program. “We made the announcement, but it was obviously too late for the pick six players,” Halstrom said, “and the horse went wire to wire like he was Secretariat.”
“Three or four guys charged up to the press-box looking for someone to strangle,” Halstrom said. “We spent several weeks trying to make that right.”
It did make for a nice carryover, however.
