Well To Do Guru wins at Maywood

Adhering to the old adage that “the show must go on,” Maywood Park presented a 14-race program despite starting the night without electricity throughout most of the plant due to a downed power line caused by high winds earlier in the day.

The power outage did not affect the track's outdoor lighting system, thus Friday’s program went off as scheduled despite both the clubhouse and grandstand areas being closed to patrons until just before the start of the third race (8 p.m. central).

The electrical problems and sloppy going did nothing to short circuit the chances of James Gorman’s Well To Do Guru as he rallied in the final strides to win the $40,000 Associates-Lester McKeever Stake in 1:54.4 at odds of 22-1.

Given a heady steer by Casey Leonard, the bay gelding was kept well off an early speed duel that was being waged by Booze Cruzin (Dale Hiteman) and Mucho Sleazy (Mike Oosting). With those two speeding through suicidal splits of :26.4 and :54.4, Leonard finally got Well To Do Guru underway from seventh as the field hit the halfway point.

“I knew they were smoking along up on the front end so I wasn’t in a big hurry to get him going up to that point,” explained Leonard. “The only thing that did concern me was the fact the horse in front of us (Doubletrouble) was gapping pretty badly so I had to use my horse a little harder than I wanted to in order to catch up to our cover.”

Quickly latching onto the back of the hard charging Thisbigdogwilfight (Dave Magee), Well To Do Guru was well positioned in fifth as Mucho Sleazy led the way by the three-quarter-mile mark in 1:24.3.

“Once we caught up to Thisbigdogwilfight my horse just swelled right up for me,” said Leonard. “At that point I didn’t want to take a chance at trying to grind them down so I just let him continue on since he felt so good.”

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