Wish You Well was a 1:51 3/5 winner of Saturday afternoon's $70,000 New Jersey Sire Stakes - Standardbred Development Fund final for 3-year-old male pacers at Freehold Raceway.
2-5 favorite Arbitrage Hanover (Jim Marohn Jr.) broke stride on the first turn, which threw the race wide-open. With Arbitrage Hanover out of contention, Pop It (Daniel Dube), who started from the outside post seven, would work his way to the lead around Wish You Well (Austin Siegelman) and cut a wicked opening quarter of 25 4/5 and kept the pace blazing to the half of 53 1/5.
Pop It and Wish You Well were in a virtual match race as the rest of the field couldn't keep up with them, and rather than continuing to follow the 27-1 Pop It, Siegelman elected to attack on the third turn with Wish You Well. Wish You Well went by Pop It with little dispute as they raced in the backstretch for the final time, and from there, the result wasn't in doubt. Wish You Well opened up to three-quarters in 1:22 1/5 and slammed the door on his eight length victory with a 29 2/5 final quarter. Alritealritealrite (Justin Huckabone), who was charted 23 1/2 lengths behind at the half, got up for second and Bet On Mac, who was 27 lengths off at the half, was the third-place finisher.
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A Bettor's Wish gelding, Wish You Well is trained by Nifty Norman for owner/breeder Kovach Stables LLC. Wish You Well has a summary of 9-8-2 from 31 outings, has earned $470,440 and paid $5.60 to win as the second choice.