CAMPBELLVILLE, ON — Trainer Harald Lunde has been hoping for weeks that Rotation would encounter some good fortune before the end of the season and Lady Luck finally smiled on the three-year-old trotting colt at Mohawk Racetrack on Saturday night as he posted his first Gold Series win in an Ontario Sires Stakes record 1:54.3.

Randy Waples returned to the race bike for the Gold Elimination and engineered an ideal trip for Rotation. The Milton resident settled the colt on the rail in fourth through the early going and watched patiently as Priceless Gem and favourite Ashanti traded the lead around. As the field headed toward the three-quarters he sent Rotation after the lead and the Balanced Image son responded with a big effort that landed him five lengths in front.

While Ashanti gained on Rotation through the final turn, when Waples asked for another acceleration down the stretch Rotation drew off for a second time to hit the wire five and quarter lengths on top and take two-fifths of a second of the former OSS record of 1:55 shared by Armbro Officer and Living Image.

“Sometimes on the turns it’s not the best thing to take a hold and when I cleared I had him going pretty good and I just didn’t want to snatch him up right immediately. He was doing it awfully comfortable. I just decided to let him do his own thing,” said Waples of his strategy. “He’s always been a really nice horse when he puts his mind to it. He’s a good one.”

The win was Rotation’s fourth of the season, but his first since last July, and was a significant improvement over the seventh-place effort he delivered in the Canadian Trotting Classic Final last Saturday.

“He just wasn’t into it last week. He was spinning around on the track He was sweated up real bad. He wouldn’t relax,” recalled Waples. “When the horse beside him ran, he decided well, if he’s gonna run, I’m gonna run. I don’t want to give him an excuse why he did it, but he just wasn’t very good.

“He was just like a different horse tonight. He was totally relaxed out there. He went to the gate good, he wasn’t all sweated up and crazy like the week before.”

Campbellville resident Lunde owns Rotation, who moved into seventh spot in the Super Final point race with the win over Ashanti and Priceless Gem. Fourth-place finisher Gothic and Lunde’s second entry in the first race, Grace Of Glory, also advanced to next Saturday’s $130,000 Gold Final.

The second elimination saw Abbey Road C deliver his fourth straight win in an impressive 1:54.4. The Incredible Abe gelding and trainer-driver Keith Jones fired out to the lead from Post 1 and never glanced back, sailing home to a six and a half length win over Visualize and division leader Semper Fi Hall.

“He’s such a great colt and he’s great from the get go,” said Jones from the Mohawk winner’s enclosure. “If he can get away from them, he swells up and gets pretty strong from there on in. There’s some left in the tank, but we’ll probably need it next week.”

The win was Abbey Road C’s seventh since Jones added trotting hopples to his equipment in early July and the Midhurst resident and owner George Charlton of Utopia are ecstatic with the rapid improvement the trotter has shown.

In his second and third start after qualifying with the trotting hopples Abbey Road C won the elimination and final of the Dream Of Glory Trot at Hanover Raceway in track record time. Seven days later he finished second in the Aug. 10 Gold Elimination at Flamboro Downs then came back the next week and set a track and OSS record in the Final. Since he was not eligible to the Grand Circuit events at Mohawk in early September Jones and Charlton opted to send the colt to Sudbury Downs for the Grassroots wild card where he posted his fifth win in a track record 1:58.3. In preparation for Saturday’s battle the colt wowed Georgian Downs fans with a 1:56.1 mile in a preferred event on Sept. 20.

“It just took me a while to put the trotting hopples on. And now it seems like he’s got things under control,” said Jones.

The colts who finished fourth and fifth behind Abbey Road C, first time Gold starters Armbro Warrior and I Gotta Wanna, will also return to Mohawk next Saturday for the last Gold Final on the sophomore trotting colts’ schedule.