Janderson Floating To Fame

Mohawk Racetrack will host three divisions of the $210,000 Ontario Sires Stakes (OSS) for two-year-old trotting fillies on Tuesday, July 19. Janderson, a daughter of Muscle Mass from the Malabar Man mare Gracious Marla, will race in the first division (Race 2) from post two as the 4-1 third choice on the morning line.

“I have been involved with hundreds of horses. I don’t think we’ve ever trained a yearling with the stride she has,” Dr. Roly Armitage noted. “Whether it’s at the farm or on the track, she sort of floats.”

Dr. Armitage, a member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, owns Janderson in partnership with his son, James Armitage. The two purchased her at the 2015 Canadian Yearling Sale for $14,000.

“I was prepared to pay $25,000 for her,” Dr. Armitage confessed. “I don’t understand why she went for only $14,000. She might’ve been on the small side, but I didn’t see that. She grew well after we got her, and now she’s an average-sized filly.”

“Her pedigree is perfect,” Dr. Armitage stated. “There’s a million-dollar winner on her dam’s side [Snow White].

Janderson was the only yearling purchase by Dr. Armitage last year.

“I’m 91 years old,” Dr. Armitage said. “Somebody told me at the sale ‘You’re not buying a yearling, are you?’ I asked ‘What do you mean? Do you mean I’m going to die? What difference does it make? The anticipation is better than the win.’”

Mike Keeling, who also campaigns 2016 Hambletonian hopeful Marion Maurader, is the trainer of Janderson.

“I’ve always been a Bill Wellwood man,” Dr. Armitage said. “His daughter, Paula, inherited that from him, and of course Mike is there, and Mike is good, too.”

Janderson (PP2, Paul MacDonell, 4-1) enters Tuesday's test off a win in the first OSS leg at Georgian Downs on July 5. She'll face some stiff competition in a pair of equally-impressive filly trotters. Literally (PP5, Dustin Jones, 5-2) won her Grassroots debut on July 10 in 1:58.1f, while On A Sunny Day (PP5, Sylvain Filion, 3-1) captured her two-year-old debut in a OSS Gold leg on the same card as Janderson.

“I expected to take what I could get because I didn’t understand the other horses,” Dr. Armitage said on Janderson’s win at Georgian. “I’ve been in the business so long...I think, particularly two-year-olds, don’t know anything yet. If you can keep them concentrated on what they’re doing, you’ll get a good horse.

“There’re a lot of exceptional fillies,” Dr. Armitage also said. “We know we’re not going to beat all of them, but we like this filly; she’s an exceptional filly. We’ve liked her all winter. In the end, we’ll take what we can get.”

Janderson is not staked outside of the OSS this year so that focus will stay on the provincial Sires Stakes program.

“We’re not expecting much, but we know we have the best as far as I’m concerned; the best-gaited filly,” Dr. Armitage said. “We have never, on this farm or in my experience, had a filly who was as smoothly-gaited as this filly as a two-year-old. It’s effortless.

“Please don’t ask me to say I have the best, I don’t. But this filly is the filly. I just don’t know how fast she can go.”

To view the entries for Tuesday's card at Mohawk, click the following link: Tuesday Entries - Mohawk Racetrack

(A Trot Insider Exclusive by Ray Cotolo)