Check Six picked a great time to break through for his first win against older competition, converting a second over trip into a win in the $224,400 Sam McKee Memorial TVG Free-For-All for older pacing horses.

All Bets Off (Matt Kakaley) fronted the field first in the 11-horse added-distance tilt, looped quickly by favoured Mel Mara (Corey Callahan). Mel Mara was on the front end through solid fractions of :26.2 and :54.1 before facing a foe named Mach It So (David Miller), flushed off the wood by Check Six (Yannick Gingras). Mach It So pressured the pacesetter through the 1:21.1 third station and persisted through the 1:48.1 mile but could not get past. Check Six was right-lined off that cover into the stretch and in the words of announcer McKee came charging hard™ down the stretch to collar Mel Mara and win by more than two lengths in a time of 2:02.1 for the 1-1/8 mile event, winning at 38-1.

Mel Mara stayed for second, followed by Mach It So and Boston Red Rocks (Jason Bartlett).

“I thought I had a chance to get a good piece,” Gingras said. “I thought this horse has a lot of bad luck. The last time he raced here he had post 11 and he never saw daylight. I was running over top of horses in the stretch. He’s had a lot of troubled trips, but I thought he was sitting on a big one and he was.”

A winner of 11 races and more than $1 million at age three, Check Six (Somebeachsomewhere - Southwind Vanna) is now 2-for-12 as a four-year-old. The winner's share of the purse lifted his seasonal bankroll to $212,535 for trainer Ron Burke and owners Burke Racing Stable LLC, Weaver Bruscemi LLC, William Switala and James Martin of Pennsylvania and New York.

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