Battle of the Belles champion Village Janus will put her four race win streak on the line in the second of two $40,000 Gold eliminations at Rideau Carleton Raceway on Sunday evening
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The two-year-old pacing filly heads into her first Gold Series test off a gritty win in the Battle of the Belles at Grand River Raceway on Aug. 2, where she and driver Mark MacDonald carved all the fractions and then fought hard down the stretch to earn the neck victory in a track record 1:55.1. The filly’s Battle of the Belles elimination win was also a front end performance, but trainer Rod Therres says the youngster is even tougher from off the pace.
“Like Mark (MacDonald) said, she waits for them,” explains Therres, who shares ownership of Village Janus with Larry Schmidt of Abbotsford. BC. “She’s way better from behind. She’d rather be on the outside attacking.”
Therres purchased the daughter of Modern Art and Village Jest from the Canadian Open Yearling Sale for $21,000 and shipped her to his base at Fraser Downs in Surrey, BC. The horseman says the filly was a pleasure to break, but never showed much in the way of speed on the training track.
“I couldn’t believe it, I thought she might have had a harness on before, she was that good,” says the Vancouver, BC native of the filly’s early lessons. “She was always very lazy, but every once in a while she would spook, or you would get mad at her for being lazy, and you knew there was something in there. I thought, okay, we’ll let you be lazy and I didn’t wake her up. I woke her up in a training race at Classy Lane here, and since then she’s been awake.”
In mid-May Therres put Village Janus on a flight to Ontario and set up a base at Classy Lane Training Centre in Puslinch, ON. The move raised the eyebrows of the horseman’s peers, who wondered why he would give an unraced two-year-old the star treatment, rather than one of his proven older racehorses.
“I said to the owner, for what we’ve got to do with her, we’ve got to fly her,” recalls Therres. “I don’t think a two-year-old can ship across Canada and then race week in and week out.”
Once she arrived in Ontario, Therres put the finishing touches on Village Janus and then entered her to qualify at Mohawk Racetrack on June 25. In rein to Mark MacDonald, the novice pacer delivered a fifth-place effort in 2:01.2. One week later the filly laid down a 1:58.4 mile in a second qualifier, sprinting home in :27.1 to claim the victory.
Village Janus made her pari-mutuel debut at Mohawk on July 9 and cruised home to a 1:55.1 victory, complete with a :26.4 final quarter, then shipped into Dresden Raceway for the July 14 Grassroots season opener. Starting from Post 5, Village Janus and Don Rankin, Jr. circled around the outside of the Dresden half-mile to a quarter length victory in 1:58.3.
The filly took her two-race win streak into the Battle of the Belles elimination and proceeded to toy with the competition en route to a six length 1:56.4 score, then demonstrated her mettle in the hard fought Aug. 2 victory.
Village Janus will start from Post 4 in Sunday’s fourth race, facing just four other fillies, but among those hoping to bring her streak to an end are Battle of the Belles runner-ups Bunkhouse Babe (Post 1) and Lyons Carrie (Post 3). Former Gold Elimination winner Sauble Joyce will start from Post 2, while Pearl Handlepistol makes her racing debut from Post 5.
Therres plans to head toward Ottawa early on Sunday morning to give Village Janus all afternoon to rest and prepare for her Gold Series debut, but notes that the youngster approaches most new experiences with the same laid back attitude she demonstrated on the training track.
“She’s just pretty relaxed, a pretty relaxed horse overall,” says the trainer, who currently resides in Cambridge, ON.
The first $40,000 Gold Elimination will be the first race on Rideau Carleton Raceway’s Sunday evening program, which gets under way at 6:30 p.m. The top four fillies from each elimination, plus one fifth-place finisher drawn by lot, will return to the Ottawa oval on Sunday, Aug. 15 for the second $130,000 Gold Final on their schedule.
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To view Sunday’s entries, click here.