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One-time
Gazette
intern reporter
Polly Anna
Jones
invited to cover
season for
Faux Sports Net
Idaho
Gem,
a cloned 3-year-old,
favored after impressive
California victory
Photo
from early months
following birth
Maltby
syndicate
will provide
competitors
Ace
Sports
Columnist
La Conner Fats too
busy on book tour
to cover season ?
Upson
Downs'
2005 Season
lost to contentious
community deliberations
over Sewer Project
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Beleaguered Track Owner plans
Mule racing for Upson Downs
Track owner J. Ellsworth Fats today announced plans for an
inaugural mule-racing season at Grace’s historic Upson Downs.
The short season will provide a prelude to the annual fall
thoroughbred-racing schedule to be kicked off Labor Day Weekend with the
running of the Brightwater Futurity. The Futurity was named and will be
run in hopes of strengthening Grace’s application for a multi-million
dollar mitigation grant from the King County wastewater treatment plant
project on the sprawling site of the once-proposed Flushing Meadows
residential development in town.
J.E. Fats is the developer, director and chairman of the board of
Grace’s multi-million dollar horseracing venue Upson Downs, located
adjacent to the town’s seasonal drive-in theater, the Roxy Cinema. He
previously served as managing director and majority owner of the now
defunct Flushing Meadows project.
Upson Downs lost an entire season in 2005 as a legion of
engineering experts, consultants and elected officials endured withering
opposition from Brightwater opponents, but continued nonetheless to
painstakingly sort through the future of a billion-dollars-plus
Brightwater operation in Grace. Locals were torn between seeing the
town’s character changed markedly by a major residential expansion or
by the ponderable impact of Brightwater.
Mule racing could herald a return of the track
to the Grace sporting scene.
The track owner’s close office associate, Miss Bambi Ambrosio,
told the Gazette that several stakes races are planned, featuring
some of the best West Coast mules the circuit has to offer. It is
believed Ms. Ambrosio is being groomed to play a major role in Upson
Down activities and that success at the turnstiles during the mule
racing experiment may well provide the answer to Fats’ choice for the
position of track general manager.
Ms. Ambrosio, considered the leading GM candidate, said Upson
Downs is excited at the prospects of bringing two Idaho cloned mules to
the track. In addition, she said Mr. Fats’ has invited “that
dynamic, perky one-time Gazette intern correspondent, Polly Anna
Jones,” to make an appearance during the season finale which will pit
seasoned, two-year olds from Grace Mule Run versus the renowned White
Trash Farm stable from Maltby.
“Ms. Jones may have other commitments with Faux Sports Net (FSN)
in her role as their token distaff reporter,” Ms. Ambrosio noted with
a slight smirk, “but we have every hope that she’ll agree to
personally report on this historic season. We’ve reserved Ms. Jones a
box right next to Mr. Fats’ luxury suite in the Jarvis & Jonsen
air-conditioned skyboxes overlooking our manicured oval track…quite an
improvement from the last time Ms. Jones graced us with her wit and
charm.”
Maltby's
Sassypants to challenge Gem
“We’re also thrilled to be able to announce our first two
entries,” Ms. Ambrosio told a packed press conference. “ Not only
will we have Sassypants out of the Maltby Mounds syndicate, but Idaho
Gem from Post Falls, Idaho, is signed on for the season.”
Idaho Gem is one of three mules cloned by animal researchers at
the University of Idaho, an achievement heralded throughout the
mule-racing world. Gem has won two out of three races entered this
summer (the third race finishing third) just completing a victory in the
San Joaquin Valley Fair in California earlier this month. Gem covered
the 350-yard course in a record setting 20.724 seconds, winning by two
and one-half lengths.
The most tested mule out of Maltby Mounds is a critter called
“Conflation” but it is not believed to have been cloned, just the
offspring of a horse and a jackass. The mare is believed to be from
Hollywood Hill south of Woodinville, the jackass from a pasture in
Maltby.
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