Rekila Talks OSS Trotting Fillies

Dresden Raceway kicks off its 2012 Ontario Sires Stakes season this Sunday with six Grassroots divisions for the two-year-old trotting fillies.

Trainer-driver Riina Rekila will start two fillies in the contest, but both Cairo and Katla will be handicapped by their post position draw. Cairo will start from the trailing Post 8 in the eighth race, while Katla gets the outside Post 7 in the ninth.

“I just told Esa [Lahtinen] that I maybe should try her behind another horse at the farm,” says Rekila of Cairo’s trailing post. “We have been training them lots together, but still when they have to go very, very fast it’s a different situation.”

Lahtinen bred Cairo, a daughter of Cadillac Hall and Mona Simoni, and he and Rekila share ownership of the filly with Veijo Heiskanen of Kallered, Sweden. The filly made her Ontario Sires Stakes debut in the Gold Series season opener at Kawartha Downs, finishing fifth in her June 28 elimination. The partners opted to move down to the Grassroots for the second event and Cairo delivered a strong third-place finish at Hanover Raceway on July 21.

“Cairo, it was just when we started racing then she showed that she had the speed and she wanted to go, and I think that she, especially her, she is going to be a pretty nice older horse,” says Rekila.

Cairo and Katla trained together all winter, but unlike her stablemate, Katla demonstrated her ability early. The filly, another homebred by Cadillac Hall and Flores, also started her provincial career at the Gold Series level and Rekila does not rule out the possibility of moving the filly back up to the top tier this season, although she says the move is more likely to come in the filly’s sophomore campaign.

“I think Katla would have been doing good in the first Gold, but we had bad luck. I think she could have been very competitive there, second or something like that, if she can get in,” says the trainer-driver of the June 28 Gold elimination that saw the filly parked for every step of the mile before finishing sixth. “I will see how they do and then maybe — Katla has the ability to go to the Gold I think, she’s fast and she’s a big horse, and the other one maybe next year, but we’ll see.”

In the interim Katla will be looking to match the winning effort she delivered in last weekend’s $24,000 Grassroots contest at Hanover Raceway. After sitting mid-pack through the mile the long-legged youngster got up for a nose victory in 2:03.2.

Katla and Rekila started at Post 1 in the Hanover start and the horse woman is not yet sure what her strategy will be from the opposite end of the starting gate at Dresden on Sunday.

“I don’t know what she’s going to do there, but we’ll see. Maybe I decide when the starting gate leaves what we have to do. She’s a pretty fast horse, but on a half-mile you need to have half faster than anyone else to go there,” explains the native of Finland, who now makes her home in Campbellville. “I have been only driving once in Dresden so I can’t remember how it works there.”

Rekila and Lahtinen share ownership of Katla through their Overseas Farms Ltd. of Campbellville, and are hoping the filly can follow in the footsteps of her elder half-brother Lakefield, who has earned $227,888 thus far in his career.

Whether Cairo and Katla can overcome their posts on Sunday or not, Rekila is confident the fillies will be regular players on the Ontario Sires Stakes circuit over the next two years.

“I like them, I always liked them because they were just trotting and they were very willing to work, like not super horses, but nice ones,” she explains. “I don’t think they are any Random Destinys, but they will be okay Grassroots horses and maybe later...you never know next year what they are going to be.”

Rekila and Lahtinen enjoyed an outstanding run in 2009 and 2010 with trotting filly Random Destiny, who banked a total of $691,223 in her career and captured the Super Final title in her sophomore season. This season’s talented two-year-old trotting fillies will be hoping to follow the path to success blazed by competitors like Random Destiny in Races 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10 on Dresden Raceway’s Sunday afternoon program, which gets under way at 1 p.m.

To view Sunday's harness racing entries, click on the following link: Sunday Entries - Dresden Raceway.

(OSS)