SUDBURY, ON — Ontario Sires Stakes action returns to Sudbury Downs on Saturday with five $21,234 Grassroots divisions for the talented two-year-old pacing fillies.
With just two events remaining in the regular season, competition is heating up as fillies attempt to nail down a berth in the Grassroots post season. With two wins, one third and one fourth-place finish in the first four events, Fabulous Flori is already assured a spot in the top 16, but trainer Mark Austin would like to see the filly use a Sept. 18 win at Hiawatha Horse Park as a springboard to another Grassroots victory in Sudbury.
“She raced good in Sarnia. It was her first time on a five-eighths mile track and it picked her up quite a bit,” says Austin. “She’s a big filly and she liked the bigger racing area.”
Fabulous Flori and driver Don McElroy used a classic come-from-behind technique to score the 1:56.2 victory at Hiawatha last weekend, finishing a head in front of top Grassroots filly Borderlinegorgious and two and three-quarter lengths in front of division leader Witness To Fame. The race was the Rambaran daughter’s second since a two-week vacation from the races which Austin feels has brought a new found maturity to the filly’s game.
“In the last six weeks she’s started to mature a lot and fill out. She is a big filly,” says the Fergus resident, who trains Fabulous Flori for his neighbour Paul Lindsey. “After Clinton (Aug. 8) she had a couple of weeks out in the field and then we picked her back up and started her in Grand River.”
Fabulous Flori finished second in the Sept. 10 start at Grand River Raceway, recovering from an uncharacteristic break behind the gate that forced Austin to find another race for the novice pacer before Saturday’s Grassroots event.
“She got jammed up on the gate and made a break, so she had to race or qualify to go up to Sudbury,” recalls the trainer. “So we raced her last Saturday night and got paid for qualifying.”
Following the Sudbury event, Fabulous Flori and her peers will wrap up their regular season at Grand River Raceway on Oct. 15 and then the top 16 point earners will converge on Hiawatha Horse Park for the Oct. 28 Grassroots Semifinals.
“We won’t race her between Sudbury and Grand River, then we’ll set her up for the Semifinal,” notes Austin. “We’re hoping she’ll be good for the Semifinal and can hopefully make the ($100,000) Final of the Grassroots.”
Fabulous Flori and regular reinsman Dave Boughton will start from Post 3 in the ninth race on Saturday, facing off against a talented field of seven that includes two-time Grassroots winner Three Kilo from Post 5.
The other four Grassroots divisions are slated to go postward as Races 7, 8, 10 and 11 on Sudbury Downs’ Saturday evening program.