Five horses vie for honors on “Showdown Saturday” at Batavia Downs

Batavia, NY — With the 2025 summer/fall harness racing meet coming to a close at Batavia Downs, it’s time for the Upstate New York Chapter of the United States Harness Writers Association to once again name the top performers of the session during the UNY-USHWA Night of Distinction awards ceremony that will be held on Saturday (Dec. 20), which is the final night of racing for the year.

This year has proven to be one of the most competitive at Batavia in recent memory and as a result, several horses are so close in performance numbers that it’s almost too close to call. However this Saturday’s (Dec. 13) draw has provided the perfect situation for an equitable resolution as the top three pacers and top two trotters will face off against each other in successive races on the program, and those results may produce a clearer picture of who will receive the awards.

On the pacing side, I Ain’t No Mack, Davey Day Trader and Stranger Things come in as the most productive resident pacers this meet and all three will compete against each other in the sixth race.

I Ain’t No Mack has seven wins, four seconds and one third with $50,515 in earnings, which is the most money made by any non-stake competitor at the meet this year. Davey Day Trader has six wins, three seconds and one third with $45,060 in purses while Stranger Things also has six wins with one second and six thirds and $45,059 in the bank. Stranger Things has won this award twice before in 2022 and 2023.

Then as far as the trotters are concerned, Crazy Ritz and El Toro Loco have been the best of the diagonal-gaited set at Batavia since July.

Crazy Ritz has five wins and five seconds with earnings of $45,900 while El Toro Loco also has five wins and $38,719 in purse loot. They will head the field of seven in the seventh race.  

This year’s winner of pacer and trotter of the meet will depend heavily on this week’s head to head results.

UNY-USHWA will also honor the top driver and trainer of the meet during the Night of Distinction.

Drew Monti is the runaway winner of the dash driving title with 105 wins, which is 25 ahead of Kevin Cummings (80) and 26 in front of Joe Chindano Jr. (79). Cummings just hit 5,000 careers wins last week at Batavia and Chindano needs only two more wins to reach 1,000 lifetime victories. 

The training title is still up for grabs, although Sam Smith sits on top with 59 wins, which is a healthy seven wins ahead of Shawn McDonough who is second with 52 wins and there are three more nights of racing to make that up. This Saturday’s card features 13 races and all the racing action begins at 5 p.m.

By Tim Bojarski, President of UNY USHWA