LONDON, ON — Ontario’s top three-year-old pacing fillies return to Western Fair Raceway on Friday night as part of the London oval’s exciting Molson Canadian Pace program.
Last season’s Ontario Sires Stakes champion Serious Comfort headlines the impressive line-up of fillies who will battle for the Gold Final title, and George Millar is keeping his fingers crossed that the filly’s string of provincial successes can be extended to six.
“She seems good. You’re always a little concerned about how they’ll come back at three, but I wasn’t quite as concerned about her because she didn’t have many starts and she never had a bad trip,” says the Newmarket resident and principal of Millar Farms. “And she got a great trip last week. She really didn’t have to do much until the three-quarters. She brushed to the lead and when she started to pull away Roger (Mayotte) said he just shut her down.”
Serious Comfort hit the wire three and one-quarter lengths up on the competition in 1:57.2 last weekend, but Millar expects to see the Precious Bunny daughter deliver a little more speed in Friday’s Gold Final.
“I think she was the season’s record holder on a half-mile track last year. She paced around Flamboro in 1:56,” recalls the owner-breeder. “So if the weather’s nice and the track’s good she should be able to pace around London in 1:55 or 1:56.”
With Post 4 in Friday’s eighth race, Mayotte can choose to come from off the pace again or take the filly to the front, and Millar says Serious Comfort is versatile enough to take advantage of whatever scenario unfolds.
“She’s just very versatile and pretty easy to rate,” he says. “When you’re racing on a half-mile track you can use her ability to leave the gate to get spotted, but she doesn’t have to get to the front, and if you put her in a hole she can relax and save something for later.”
Robert Atkin trains Serious Comfort for Millar Farms, and the horseman had a moment’s worry when the winner of $413,401 did not eat her breakfast and developed a low grade fever after last Saturday’s elimination win.
“She was not 100 per cent herself after her last race,” says Millar. “But she seems fine now so hopefully it was nothing to be concerned about.”
Millar and Atkin will be keeping a close watch on their protege heading into Friday’s race to ensure that she is in perfect form to tackle her OSS rivals. Among the fillies hoping to wrestle the spotlight from Serious Comfort is A And Gs Rockette, who posted the fastest elimination win and gets the advantageous Post 1 in the Final.
Western Fair Raceway’s stakes laden program gets under way at 7:30 pm on Friday evening, with The New PL City of London Pacing Series Finals in Races 4 and 6, the three-year-old pacing filly Gold Final in Race 8 and the $275,000 Molson Canadian Pace headlining the event in Race 10.