Memorial Day weekend wasn’t quite as…memorable…for Scott Fiedler as the August weekend in 2020 when he won $248,000 for capturing the 2nd annual Spa & Surf Showdown. But it was still a weekend to savor for the Long Island sports camp operator.

Fiedler put up 2 winners and 2 runners up on Saturday—and his 2 winners were the day’s biggest: Hilliard ($22.60, $6.30) in the 8th at BAQ and Santa Barbarian ($89.00, $27.00) in the final contest race, the 10th at Santa Anita.

The four collections added up to $109.50 and, more to the point for Fiedler, $14,691 in our richest tourney of the week, Saturday’s $25,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray (an HT Tour event) that closed with a final purse of $32,648/

Playing the same selections in a different Pick & Pray resulted in Fiedler also grabbing an NHC seat on Saturday.

Fiedler finished second in Saturday’s $165 play-in, besting all except Chris McDonald, who also had Hilliard and Santa Barbarian in a 2-win, 2-place portfolio.

Another big weekend winner was Michael Caposio on Sunday.

Similar to Fiedler on Saturday, Caposio saved his best for last, scoring with Brooklyn Guy ($34.20, $11.00) in the 10th at Monmouth. 

The 5-win, 1-place effort rewarded Caposio to the tune of $12,009 in Sunday’s HT Tour competition, our $20,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray, which closed with a pot of $26,687.

It also rewarded him with a berth in Sunday’s Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray tourney qualifier.

Caposio received a $2,000 entry into the inaugural Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray—a $300,000 Guaranteed tourney here on Breeders’ Cup Friday and Saturday, October 31 and November 1.

In Sunday’s Breeders’ Cup Low Ratio qualifier, Caposio didn’t win…but he did the next best thing.

He finished second to Joe “Kramer vs.” Kramer, who hit four of the last five winners (including Brooklyn Guy) to take home the $10,000 seat. Happily for Caposio, there were enough entrants signed on for second-place to be worth a $5,000 partial BCBC berth. (And based on his Sunday cash-game winnings, we know Caposio will be able to afford funding the other half of his BCBC entry.)

So there will be no need to set up any GoFundMe pages for Caposio—or Joseph Clancey, for that matter.

Clancey captured our first cash-game feature of the week, taking the up-top money of $2,706 in Wednesday’s $5,000 Guaranteed tourney, which paid out a total of $6,013. Clancey (4 firsts, 2 seconds) rambled off to a $34.80 victory, thanks in large part to Cloudy Star ($42.20, $12.80) in the 6th at Horseshoe Indy.

Scores were much, much lower in Wednesday’s Monmouth Pick Your Prize qualifier. The two players to crack the $40.00 mark were the two to come away with $2,000 seats for this coming Saturday.

Congratulations to George Henning (4 wins, 1 place) and Ken Jordan (1W, 5P). Henning’s top winner returned $9.20. Jordan’s lone winner paid $5.20.

Raj Satyan scored a healthy, $36.40 triumph in Wednesday’s New York, New York Challenge qualifier.

Cloudy Star was the shining star of Satyan’s 3-win, 1-place stable.

The following day, Satyan again turned in a 3-win, 1-place performance.

This time, it brought him a Monmouth Pick Your Prize entry after he captured our Gulfstream-only, full-card qualifier to the May 31st test. Satyan’s big hit came in race 2 with Tululo ($29.00, $7.20). 

The winner of the 2024 Players Championship, Matthew Bickey, pocketed the $3,390 first prize in Thursday’s cash feature, our $6,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray, which was ultimately worth a total of $7,534. 

Bickey’s best pick among 3 wins and a place was Sapphire Beauty ($41.80, $14.00) in the first contest heat, race 6 at Delaware.

Sean O’Malley (2 wins, 0 places) also came up with Sapphire Beauty.

O’Malley garnered the $1,500 seat in Thursday’s qualifier to next month’s $250,000 Gtd. New York, New York Challenge, a 2-day Pick & Pray competition on the full Friday and Saturday cards from Saratoga.

On Friday, George Chute made a lot out of a little. Then again, he had a lot of little.

Chute missed out on the day’s two biggest prices in Friday’s HT Tour battle, our $15,000 Gtd, Pick & Pray, which had a final prize pool of $22,111. That’s not usually a formula for success. His longest-priced winner of the day returned just $7.10. However, Chute did a great job of stockpiling. He amassed 6 winners (three of them in the final three races) and 3 runners up, and he got the job done. When the dust had settled, Chute turned his bevy of shortish prices into $9,950. 

Chute’s Friday battle plan also worked nicely in Friday’s Monmouth Pick Your Prize qualifier, which attracted enough entries for four $2,000 spots to be distributed.

Here, Chute laddered his way to third place, behind fellow seat winners Nicholas “Gaining Ground” Battaglia (5 wins, 2 places) and Wendy Long (4W, 2P) and ahead of the only other player to exceed $50.00, Derek Isenberg (5W, 1P). Battaglia, Long and Isenberg all connected with Consider it Done ($13.40, $5.30) in race 6 at BAQ.

The same selections also got Battaglia first place in a different Friday tourney.

This one was significantly more valuable to Battaglia…Friday’s Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier.

Consider it Done was common to the scorecards of the three players who punched their tickets to Vegas in Friday’s $75 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers.

Congratulations to Wayne Atwell (5 wins, 3 places), Devanathan Murugesan (6W, 1P) and FanDuel TV/NBC’s Matt Bernier (5W, 2P). This will be Bernier’s second NHC appearance. His first came in 2013. Bernier didn’t win any money, but it was a successful weekend nonetheless for him. A roving camera crew spotted him as the youngest participant in that year’s event, and that led to his eventual role on Esquire TV’s Horseplayers series the following year.

John Macklin (5 wins, 3 places), Robert Turner (4W, 3P) and Mark “Dr.” Detro (5W, 1P) got the available $1,500 berths in Friday’s New York, New York Challenge qualifier.

Macklin and Turner both backed Consider it Done. Detro took the “Chute route.” His top winner paid $7.10.

For Rafael Lopez (5 firsts, 3 seconds), the high-yielding horse of the day was Fede ($9.80, $4.60) in the 8th at Gulfstream.

Lopez secured himself the $2,000 entry that was up for grabs in Friday’s qualifier to the Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray tourney.

On Saturday, Scott Fiedler wasn’t the only one who enjoyed a multi-win day. So did Barbara Small.

Cap horse Santa Barbarian provided the big finish that Small (3 wins, 2 places) needed to finish first in Saturday’s New York, New York Challenge qualifier. The three who ended up closest to Small at the end also picked up $1,500 seats. They were Jacob Warden (2W, 2P), John Gaspar (5W, 1P) and Shirley Wolff (1P, 1P). It was a particularly big reversal of fortune for Wolff…who whiffed on the first eight contest races.

Small lost $8.30 off her NYNYC score in Saturday’s Monmouth Pick Your Prize Challenge qualifier, but she still hung on for a close second-place finish that brought her a $2,000 spot in this Saturday’s popular contest.

Finishing first was Gary Gristick (2 wins, 4 places). In third was Gregory Lewis (3W, 6P). And the fourth available spot went to Jeff Bussan (3W, 2P). Gristick and Bussan both had 10-1 Hilliard in the 8th at BAQ. The best return for Lewis came from BAQ race 10 longshot Flat to Da Mat, who provided a max $22.00 place payoff (for contest purposes) after running second.

Tyler Harringer recorded 5 Saturday winners, including three straight at the end that were capped off by bomb Santa Barbarian.

Harringer won a hefty $6,500 package in our weekly Del Mar Summer Challenge qualifier. In case you weren’t aware, this is a guaranteed qualifier each week. So keep an eye on entry count for this one this coming Saturday…just in case the many Pick Your Prize participants forget to enter it this week.

Hilliard was the star of the day for Jeff Higgins (2 firsts, 2 seconds).

Higgins procured the low-cost Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge berth in Saturday’s $179 qualifier at HorsePlayers.

Hilliard was also the highlight for Jim Murphy.

Murphy (2 firsts, 5 seconds) earned the $500 scholarship in Saturday’s play-in to the June 21 Xpressbet Canterbury BCBC Qualifier.

Another Hilliard fan was Evan Trommer.

Trommer used Hilliard plus one other winner and four runners up to collect $4,986 in Saturday’s $7,124 Big Bucks Pick & Pray.

The 2022 Spa & Surf Showdown champion Tim Hughes had but one Saturday winner…but it was a good one.

That would be 43-1 shot Santa Barbarian in the contest finale. That windfall—plus one earlier place collection—propelled Hughes to the top of the leaderboard at the conclusion of Saturday’s qualifier to the Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray tourney.

Tim Darnell finished first in a pair of Sunday qualifiers.

Darnell picked 6 winners, led by Brooklyn Guy at Monmouth, to capture Sunday’s Monmouth Pick Your Prize Challenge qualifier. Wendy Long (4 wins, 1 place) finished second, followed by fellow seat earners Michael Guadagno (2W, 1P), John Fisher (3W, 2P) and Todd “American” Faro (3W, 5P). For Long, it was the second Pick Your Prize berth won during the week after grabbing one on Friday. The top four all had Brooklyn Guy. Faro’s best pick was Trackster ($25.20, $14.40) in the 9th at Gulfstream.

Like cream, Darnell also rose to the top in Sunday’s New York, New York Challenge qualifier.

Again, Wendy Long (3rd) wound up not far behind Darnell. Also gaining New York, New York Challenge entries were runner up Rick Bruton (6 wins, 5 places) and fourth-place contestant Ted “Forbidden” Apple (4W, 0P). Bruton’s performance was extra-notable in that his horses ran first or second in each of the first 11 contest races. Only the Brooklyn Guy race at the end tripped him up completely.

Brooklyn Guy didn’t trip up Kenny McMahan. 

The Monmouth 16-1 shot was one of three straight winners that closed out a 5-win day for McMahan in Sunday’s NHC Low Ratio qualifier at HorsePlayers.

The Memorial Day cash feature was a $20,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray that closed its doors with $28,875 in the kitty. The winner of the $12,993 first prize in this HT Tour competition was Jim Trepinski.

Trepinski (3 wins, 1 place) did all his scoring over the first five contest races. His best return came via Waralo ($19.20, $10.00) in the 8th at BAQ.

Kenneth Mollicone also had a highly productive Memorial Day.

With 3 wins and 3 places that were topped by Trust Fund ($19.00, $4.50) in the 6th at BAQ, Mollicone led the way in a 5-seat qualifier to next month’s $250,000 Gtd. New York, New York Challenge. The other four advancers were Timothy Masek (4W, 1P), Myles Richards (6W, 1P), Jose Giron (4W, 1P) and Tory Cameron (2W, 5P). Masek and Giron also dipped into their beloved Trust Fund. Richards and Cameron took the more dangerous path of riding with Dirty Harry ($14.20, $4.60) in the first contest race, the 6th at Monmouth.

Speaking of five-seat qualifiers, Mollicone did very well in another one of those on Monday.

He finished 4th in the special $125 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers…which guaranteed five seats. Leading the way was 2018 The BIG One champ Joe Pettit, whose 5 wins and 2 places included Trust Fund. James Costello recorded 2 winners followed by place collections in each of the final four races to finish second. Then came “The Commissioner” Tim Smith (6 wins, 3 places) in third. Brian Salamone (5W, 1P) rounded out the Vegas ticket punchers by finishing fifth.

The other holiday feature at HorsePlayers was a $500 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio Pick & Pray.

Trust Fund plus 3 other winners and 1 runner up got the job—and the $10,000 seat—done for Gary Blair.

John Foster hit the winners of 4 of the first 5 contest races (including Waralo), and he added one more winner later on.

Foster scooped up the $500 seat in Monday’s play-in to the Xpressbet Canterbury BCBC Qualifier on June 21.

David Barnier (4 winners) also supported Waralo.

Barnier got the $2,000 entry in the Monday qualifier to the Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray tourney.

Last but not least, there were five winners of $2,000 berths in Monday’s qualifier to this Saturday’s Monmouth Pick Your Prize Challenge.

Congratulations—and good luck on Saturday—to Rick Vasquez (5 wins, 1 place), 2023 Spa & Surf Showdown champ Anthony Spinazzola (4W, 0P), Rafael Lopez (6W including 6-1 King of Gosford in the Shoemaker Mile, 3P), Joshua Taarud (5W, 3P) and Mickey Hopkins (3W, 3P). For Lopez, it was the second seat won in four days. On Friday, he captured the day’s Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray qualifier.

Thank you for spending a portion of your Memorial Day week/weekend with us (or at least for reading about it). Best wishes to the many, many HorseTourneys qualifiers who will be doing battle on Saturday in the Monmouth Pick Your Prize Challenge. In the meantime, there will be plenty going on around these parts as we flip the calendar from May to June. Good luck to all!