A baker's dozen of baby races were conducted on Friday (June 19) at Woodbine Mohawk Park with two-year-old filly pacers and trotters on-track for lessons and conditioning in advance of what their connections hope will be a successful season.
The Friday session started with four qualifiers for trotting fillies, and all four winners were within six-fifths of a second. Showing the most speed on the morning was the Ontario-Sired filly Edgewater (Rick Zeron), winning in 2:00.3. Sitting the pocket behind Tipsy In Dixie (Robert Shepherd) through fractions of :30.3, 1:01.2 and 1:32, Zeron right-lined Edgewater at the head of the lane and the filly responded with a strong closing quarter to hit the wire three-parts of a length better than a late-closing Imalovelylady (James MacDonald). Tipsy In Dixie stayed for third, just a length and a half back of the winner.
A homebred owned Rick Joe And Johnny Stable of Oakville,Ont., James Walker of Port Perry,Ont., and Ecuries Daniel Plouffe Inc. of Bromont, Que., Edgewater (Kadabra - Rustic Rosie) is the third foal (first filly and first Kadabra) from a full-sister to O'Brien Award winner Riveting Rosie.
On the pacing side, there were three pacing fillies to win qualifiers with sub-1:55 speed. The fastest of all was Alumni Seelster, who just missed winning her baby race debut a week ago. She atoned for that effort with a sharp 1:54.1 gate-to-wire performance, winning by nearly six lengths. Sylvain Filion guided the daughter of State Treasurer to victory for a group of individuals very familiar with her sire: trainer Dr. Ian Moore and owners Sally MacDonald of Souris, P.E.I. and Paul MacDonald of Regina, Sask. The filly was a $50,000 London Selected Sale purchase.
Game Of Shadows scorched the Mohawk oval with a wire-to-wire 1:54.2 mile in her second appearance of the season, a length better than a dead-game debuting Lillysilk (Jody Jamieson).
"She's competitive," said driver and co-owner Louis-Philippe Roy during the qualifying session. "Training down, every time a horse would come to wheel, she didn't want to let them go...even sometimes get mean, and that's actually what did down the lane when Jody went close to her, she just wanted to fight her so it's hard to say if she was all out or not but the weather here today is like perfect for speed."
Roy was taking care of the filly during the winter and training her down at Richard Moreau's stable, so he was accustomed to the filly and wasn't 100 percent pleased with her debut one week ago.
"Last week she was a little disappointing to me, she wasn't steering perfectly. So I made a few equipment changes with her during the week."
Roy selected the filly along with co-owner Adriano Sorella at the 2019 London Selected Yearling Sale, paying $21,000 for the daughter of Shadow Play - Cheyenne Ava.
"Adriano [Sorella] and I bought two fillies at London. When we went there, we actually liked three horses and we ended up buying all three...the two fillies, and the other one Adriano bought him. I really loved that filly at the sale but I wasn't even sure she was going to race at two. She needed to mature a lot during the winter and she had a lot of time and finally, this spring, she just turned out and now she's looking good."
The third filly with a sub-1:55 score was the regally-bred Grace Hill, making every call a winning one for owner Tom Hill, trainer Dan Lagace and driver Bob McClure. The daughter of Always B Miki - Western Silk, a $75,000 Lexington Selected Yearling, tacked a :27.1 closer onto her effort this morning to trip the timer in 1:54.4.
Qualifiers continue on Saturday (June 20) at Woodbine Mohawk Park with 11 dashes carded for rookie trotting and pacing colts & geldings.
To view the results from Friday's qualifying session, click the following link: Friday Results - Woodbine Mohawk Park (Baby Races).