Locally owned Rubies Are Real heads into Sunday's $72,000 Trillium contest off an impressive third-place showing in an overnight, and trainer Ken Skinner is hoping
Rideau Carleton Raceway fans will see another strong performance from the three-year-old pacing filly.
"She raced huge her last start out of the ten hole," says Skinner, who trains Rubies Are Real for Lee Cullen of Ottawa and Brenda Maxwell of Arnprior. "She's never left before like that. She got tired down the lane, but Mario (Baillargeon) said she's learned how to be a racehorse."
Driver Mario Baillargeon engineered the third-place finish for Rubies Are Real in the Aug. 2 overnight at Mohawk Racetrack. The reinsman fired the daughter of Real Artist-Nines Wild away from the outside post and carved a :27.2 quarter and a :56.2 half before handing off the lead. The outing was the filly's second start back after a bout with a virus that kept her away from the races for three weeks.
"She was off almost three weeks," recalls Skinner. "I raced her (Aug. 13) and she finished fourth, she was all right, but her last start was very impressive."
Cullen and the late Don Booth acquired the chestnut filly from the 2007 Harrisburg Yearling Sale for just $6,000. Skinner says the daughter of $1.1 million winner Nines Wild attracted a fair bit of attention from sale goers, but not because of her pedigree or conformation.
"They bought her for $6,000 because she was jumping up in the air, and because she was a chestnut. A lot of people don't like chestnuts," notes the horseman. "She's very intelligent, and very feisty, just like her mom. And her mom was a chestnut."
As a two-year-old Rubies Are Real made 10 starts and recorded two seconds and two thirds for earnings of $9,242. This season the filly has one win and two thirds to her credit through 11 starts, banking $17,550 for Cullen and Maxwell. Sunday's outing will be the youngster's first appearance in the provincial stakes program.
"She didn't race last year in the Trillium, she was a late bloomer last year," says Skinner.
Skinner adds that Nines Wild enjoyed limited success in stakes action as a young horse, earning most of her $1 million in Fillies and Mares Open action at Woodbine and Mohawk as an aged mare.
"Her mother made $1 million just racing at Woodbine. I talked to Kevin McMaster and he said she was four or five when she started blooming into a racehorse," says Skinner, who also conditions the filly's full brother, four-year-old Engine Number Nine.
Heading into Sunday's Trillium battle off a 10 day rest, Skinner stepped up Rubies Are Real's training program, but says the filly will only give him so much extra in a training mile.
"She doesn't train like most horses. She only goes what she has to," explains the horseman. "She's more aggressive when she's in a race. When she's around other horses she's more aggressive. She looks after herself.
"She's just a very special horse, and she's just getting better all the time," he adds.
Rubies Are Real will make her Trillium debut from Post 5 in Sunday's fifth race. Among her challengers are the top ranked Grassroots performers, Run To Vegas and Star Of Show, who will start from Posts 2 and 7 respectively, and recent Pennsylvania Sires Stakes winner Blogette Hanover, who gets Post 10 in the 10-filly field.
Rideau Carleton Raceway's Sunday evening program gets under way at 6:30 p.m., with the three-year-old pacing fillies squaring off in their $72,442 Trillium Series contest in Race 5.
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