Owners Chris and Dale Lawton have thrived in the ladies’ features in the early stages of the 2021 racing season at Saratoga Casino Hotel. The Central New York-based ownership team owns both top-flight mares Racine Bell and Surreal Feeling. Over the course of the last three Wednesdays at the Spa, those distaffers have recorded victories in a trio of features. Racine Bell, who is trained by Dave Dewhurst, won the local Open on March 17 when she scored with Brian Cross in the sulky. Surreal Feeling (So Surreal) has always enjoyed success at the Spa and the Dale Lawton trainee returned to town last Wednesday (March 31th) to compete in the $10,000 Winners Over for pacing mares. She had little difficultly going wire-to-wire in that one with Jimmy Devaux at the controls. This week, the six year old was assigned post six in the six-horse feature for the ladies but wasted no time moving out to the early lead. Surreal Feeling was hounded throughout the entire second-half of the mile by rival Berazzled (Billy Dobson) who was making her debut in the local Open but held strong in the stretch to prevail in a win photo scoring in 1:54 in the feature. For Surreal Feeling, it was victory number 24 in 71 lifetime starts. Berazzled was a strong second while Thats Incredible (Jay Randall) finished third. The exacta and triple in the feature paid $8.90 and $27.20, respectively, with the 1-5 favorite on top. The win in the feature was one of three on the card for Jimmy Devaux who currently sits third in the driver standings for the ’21 season.
Live racing resumes on Monday afternoon at Saratoga with a first post time of Noon.
Mike Sardella
Photo: Melissa Simser-Iovino
