The first of Woodbine Racetrack’s winter stakes series will get underway on Saturday, December 12 with a pair of $20,000 opening-leg divisions of the Valedictory Pacing

Series for three-year-old colts and geldings – and for Sombrero Blue Chip it will be a chance to show whether he’s ready to get back into the action.

A $150,000 yearling purchase, Sombrero Blue Chip looked like a North America Cup contender early in 2009, but a trip south to take in the New Jersey Classic, just prior to the NA Cup, seemed to knock the stuffing out of the Western Ideal colt.

“I don’t know if he was just tired or worn out from shipping to New Jersey and back, or what it was,” said trainer Rene Laarman, “but he just sort of deteriorated from there. He’s got all the pedigree in the world, but he just fizzled on us. We ran all sorts of tests but we couldn’t pinpoint anything, so we decided to just turn him out for a while.”

With six weeks of pasture time, Sombrero Blue Chip started feeling good again, enough so that Laarman put him back in training this fall and qualified him at Mohawk on November 20. The colt paced home an easy winner in 1:57.3 and subsequently captured an $8,100 event by three lengths at Flamboro Downs, on November 29.

“I’m hoping that the start at Flamboro will be a confidence-builder for him,” Laarman said. “It would be nice to get him back to where he was in the spring, and fulfill some of that potential through the winter months. He’s not that good a shipper, so I don’t think we’ll be going back to New Jersey with him, but there’s lots of good money at Woodbine
if he’s competitive.”

Sombrero Blue Chip, currently rated the mild 7-2 favourite, has drawn Post 2 in the second of the two Valedictory splits on Saturday night, and he’ll have Mark MacDonald in the bike to guide him.

The Valedictory Series' opening leg will be contested in Races 5 and 8, with respective post times of 8:54 and 9:57 p.m.

Click here to view Saturday's harness racing entries from Woodbine.

(WEG)