New series pops up at Hawthorne

With the calendar turned to November, the last of the Illinois-bred stakes are behind us, and that usually means conditioned or claiming series have arrived. In this case, they have at Hawthorne on Saturday night (Nov. 4) where the first of three “Pop-Up” series legs will be contested.

Originally called the Winter Series on Hawthorne’s nomination series form, it was changed to the “Pop-Up Series.” There will be three legs of each Pop-Up series with $20,000 finals on the line on Nov. 26.

Most of the seven-horse field that makes up the $7,000 Pop-Up (race four) are first season trotters that have participated in either the recent Fox Valley Flan or Kadabra state-bred stakes. Since this series is limited to ICF 2-year-old trotters that are non-winners of $20,000 (fillies $25,000) lifetime, obviously none fared very well in most of their Night of Champions legs.

The favorite most likely will be Lous Amazon (Casey Leonard), one of two freshmen in the race from the Steve Searle stable. She got her name “Amazon” because of her size, and that’s likely the main reason why she doesn’t get around the turns well and shows breaks in her last two Fox Valley Flan legs. However, the big daughter of Lou’s Legacy has shown ability. She was a competitive third in her Sept. 24 “Flan” division and easily won a pair of Illinois Department of Agriculture races on Springfield’s all-dirt oval in mid-Summer.

Lous Amazon took her mark of 1:58.1 at Hawthorne in mid-September, more than four seconds faster than any other trotter’s best winning mile in the field.