DELAWARE, Ohio -- Limelight Beach led the entire way to win the final in 1:50 4/5 and capture the 69th Little Brown Jug today at the Delaware County Fairgrounds, getting his first two wins of the year in an elimination and the final with driver Yannick Gingras.

DELAWARE, Ohio � A neck here, a quarter of a length there.

Limelight Beach had come close this year, including seven second-place finishes in 12 starts, but he didn�t have a win in 2014 going into the 69th Little Brown Jug today.

He and driver Yannick Gingras finally got it right � twice, in fact � in winning a Jug elimination and the final for trainer/part-owner Ron Burke, the Wingfield family of Kenton and Ridgeway, Ohio, and dozens of other investors and hangers-on who flooded the winner�s circle at the Delaware County Fairgrounds.

Limelight Beach earned $315,980 from a Jug-record purse of $647,500.

�This is a dream come true coming here and winning the Little Brown Jug,� Gingras said after his first Jug victory at age 35.

On a picture-postcard day in front of a crowd of 44,101, he and Limelight Beach sent an unmistakable message to the rest of the field in the final: Catch us if you can.

No one could as the pair took advantage of the favored rail position and led through comfortable fractions of 274/5, 552/5 and 1:23 and won in 1:504/5. Had he been pressured more, Gingras was confident that he could have held off any challenge.

�He was scary; he had plenty left,� Gingras said.

Brothers Bill, Bob, Charlie and Tom Wingfield own 25 percent of Limelight Beach. The partners with whom they bought the horse for $25,000 two years ago sold their stakes this summer. One of the new owners is Burke, the runaway leader in purse earnings by harness-racing trainers this year with almost $20 million.

Burke, 44, was in tears after his first Jug victory. And it wasn�t because he had just won a big chunk of money.

�I like to go for the money as much as anyone, but I�m more about winning than anything else,� he said. �I know I don�t get emotional when I get a check.�

When he bought in, Burke took over the training of Limelight Beach from Delaware-based Brian Brown. Yesterday, he saluted Brown�s efforts.

�He had this horse for two years; I had him for three months,� Burke said.

The Wingfields have been with Limelight Beach from the beginning. When others sold, they didn�t want to part with their ownership share.

The journey was a rough one. After winning six of 10 races and $210,192 as a 2-year-old last year, Limelight Beach couldn�t find the winner�s circle. The Wingfields were perplexed, but they stuck with it. Especially Bob.

After tough losses �we would get back home and be disappointed, and Bob would say, �When we get to Delaware, we�re going to win two.� And he was right,� Tom Wingfield said.

Burke said the track at Delaware played a role in the resurgence of Limelight Beach, who is the first horse to win the Jug after coming into the race winless for the year.

�The shorter stretch helped him,� he said. �Maybe he�s coming into his own. Hopefully this is the start of something, not the end of something.�

Let�s Drink On It and 21-year-old driver Tyler Smith of Washington Court House won the first elimination over At Press Time by 11/4 lengths in 1:51. Smith is the youngest driver to win a Jug elimination. The pair was second in the final.

Odds-on favorite Lyonssomewhere broke stride as he and Gingras entered the final turn of the first elimination. Lyonssomewhere, the Cane Pace winner who was considered a top Jug contender, had gotten an easy lead from the unfavorable No. 7 post and led every step of the way to that point.

Gingras drove Limelight Beach to victory in 1:51 in the second elimination after sliding out from the rail and going three-wide in the stretch to beat Somewhere In LA and pace-setting McWicked by three-fourths of a length.

The top money-winning horse in the Jug, He�s Watching, was never a factor for driver Tim Tetrick in finishing sixth in the second elimination and failing to advance to the final.

sdavis@dispatch.com