Morag and Jim Watt have been breeding and raising Standardbred racehorses on their Clinton-area farm for three decades and are fixtures on Clinton Raceway’s Sunday afternoon programs. This Sunday, however, their homebred filly, Watt Machs Me Win, will line up alongside some of Ontario’s finest three-year-old pacing fillies in an elimination for the track’s signature event, the Kin Pace.
“It’s really exciting to be able to have one to race in the Kin Pace, right here at home,” said Morag. “You work your whole racing career, you strive to have good horses, and to have one that’s good enough to even enter is kind of a little thrill.”
Watt Machs Me Win heads into the $8,000 elimination with five starts under her belt this season – one over the half-mile oval at The Raceway at Western Fair District and four on the seven-eighths mile surface at Mohawk Racetrack. While she’s yet to find the winner’s circle, the filly has been showing steady progress.
“She’s just started back this year, she’s only had a couple of starts, so she’s still sort of racing into form,” noted Watt. “We’re looking forward to her three-year-old year.
“We tend not to push our two-year-olds overly hard, we like to let them mature a little bit before we really ask them to exert themselves, so we sort of were conservative with her last year in her starts and in her training. Hopefully with a little bit of maturity she’s ready to roll this year.”
Jim taught Watt Machs Me Win her early lessons and handled training duties on the daughter of Mach Three and Feisty Form through her two-year-old campaign, but the couple opted to send her to trainer Richard Moreau in early May, after the first start of her sophomore season.
“It’s very unusual for us to send a horse away, but we felt that this filly showed enough potential that we wanted to give her every opportunity this summer to race in the stakes,” Morag explained. “It just seemed like a good strategy to send her away for the stakes season to see if she could reach her potential.”
The Watts hope the filly’s knowledge of Clinton Raceway’s half-mile surface will work to her advantage in Sunday’s second race, where she will face a field that includes two fillies from the division’s top tier. At the rail, Bad As Leader comes into the Kin Pace elimination off a sixth-place finish in the $438,000 final of the Fan Hanover Stakes at Mohawk on June 25. Cracklin Rose (who will start from Post 4) heads into the elimination on a two-race win streak, which includes a victory in the $105,000 Ontario Sires Stakes Gold Series event that took place at Mohawk on June 4.
“That’s all part of racing, you just have to accept it,” said a pragmatic Watt about the deep field. “Sometimes it doesn’t play out the way that you imagine it will before the race, so that’s when you depend on the driver’s expertise to use his best judgment when he’s behind the gate.
“That’s what makes it exciting and gives everyone an opportunity, because anything can happen,” she added.
Travis Henry will steer Watt Machs Me Win from Post 6 in Sunday’s test. The top two fillies from each of the three eliminations – along with two third-place finishers selected by random draw – will advance to the $60,000 Kin Pace Final on July 3.
This year’s installment is the eighth edition of the Kin Pace, named in honour of the Clinton Kinsmen, who introduced pari-mutuel wagering to Clinton Raceway in 1970. The final will take place on the last day of the Kinsmen and Kinettes annual PlucKIN’ Fest, which features a jam-packed weekend of activities. The activities will kick off with a Chicken BBQ and Craft Beer Night in the Clinton Raceway grandstand on Thursday evening.
(Clinton Raceway)