REXDALE, ON — When the two-year-old fillies line up behind the starting gate for their first $130,000 Gold Final at Woodbine Racetrack on Monday evening, trainer Ian Downey will be feeling less pressure than many of his peers.

When Downey’s filly Josee Rocket won her $44,414 elimination last week she repaid her $5,500 purchase price, nine months of training bills and put some away for a rainy day.

“I couldn’t believe picking her up for that price,” recalls Downey, who acquired the filly at last fall’s Canadian Classic yearling Sale. “I left the ring right away saying, “Where did I miss something on her?” But when I went and looked at her again I said, “I still don’t see anything.””

When she arrived at his St. George Brant farm, the daughter of Pacific Rocket and Josee Select still looked picture perfect and Downey soon found that she had an attitude to match.

“She is the first colt I’ve ever trained that I never had to turn the whip around. Where ever you wanted to go, she’d go there,” he says. “She’s just been a real lady.”

Before her 1:56.4 elimination win last week, Josee Rocket qualified at Mohawk Racetrack on June 14. She finished second by two and a half lengths in a 2:00.2 mile, pacing her last quarter in :28.4 without any urging. That performance left Downey and the filly’s owners, his wife Susan and John James Kellites of Hamburg, NY, confident they would see a solid finish in her Ontario Sires Stakes debut.

“I was pretty confident that she would be first or second in there, with a little racing luck,” says Downey.

Woodbine fans overlooked the filly last week, sending her off as the second longest shot in her elimination, but with Post 3 for Monday’s $130,000 contest she is certain to be among the favourites. Paul Mackenzie will be back in the race bike and Downey says his only instructions to the veteran reinsman will be, “Good luck.”

“My mare follows real well too. She doesn’t have to race on the front, but she can, which is nice,” says Downey, adding that he will be keeping a careful eye on the other two elimination winners throughout the race. “That mare of (John) Kopas’s (Venus Killean) is going to be a real nice mare and Billy Budd’s mare (Warrawee Flare) is fast. She puts in a few steps, but she is fast.”

Warrawee Flare and Mike Saftic, whose 1:55.1 victory was the fastest of the three eliminations, will start from Post 7 on Monday, while Venus Killean and Steve Condren, who stopped the clock at 1:56.2, get Post 2.

Post time at Woodbine Racetrack on Monday is 7:40 pm and the two-year-old pacing fillies will roar around the seven-eighths mile oval in Race 4.