GLOUCESTER, ON — This week owner Tom Rankin will be spending his spare time whispering subliminal messages in the ears of three-year-old trotting fillies World Class Image and Check And Balance. The fillies are headed to Rideau Carleton Raceway on Thursday for Gold Elimination action and if they advance through to next week’s Final Rankin plans on taking a few days off to make the trip to Ottawa.

“If they make the Final I am going to Ottawa. I have a son up there who’s a Chartered Accountant. He lives in a condo, too small for us to stay in, but he usually books us into a pretty nice hotel,” says the St. Catharines resident with a chuckle. “I’m kind of excited, I hope they make the Final. It would be a good excuse to take a couple days off and get up there.”

Barring any extraordinary problems, Rankin would seem to have a better shot than most at getting his mini vacation. World Class Image heads into her elimination as the reigning Gold Final champion, having swept her elimination and the Aug. 18 Final at Mohawk Racetrack. And while she made a break in her Aug. 11 elimination and did not qualify for the Final, Check And Balance finished second in the consolation event at Mohawk and Rankin says trainer Pat Hunt thinks he has solved a steering problem that had been plaguing the filly.

“She had a little problem with the steering in her last race, but hopefully we have resolved it,” says the owner. “She trains as well as World Class Image, and I think she’s going to get better every race.”

Check And Balance will start from Post 3 in the first $51,425 elimination, slated as Rideau Carleton’s third race, while World Class Image gets Post 6 in Race 6. Both fillies are making just their second appearance in the Gold Series this season after missing the first two events due to a serious lung infection.

“I was real nervous we might lose the year with them,” recalls Rankin, who shares ownership on the fillies with his wife Elizabeth. “It was pretty depressing to say the least, thinking that all our best horses were going to be on the shelf.

“Even when they started racing you wonder, are they going to die in the last quarter?” he adds.

With a handful of solid outings under their belts the Balanced Image daughters have demonstrated no long term affects from the infection, giving Rankin cause to hope that they can make up for lost time in the two remaining Gold events.

“It’s a long trek to Ottawa, but we have to go, we need the points — particularly Check And Balance needs the points — for the Super Final,” he explains.

Also hoping to accumulate a few points toward the $300,000 season ending Super Final is Patti Royal, who is making a strategic leap up to the Gold Series from the Grassroots level.

“I was wanting some points in the Grassroots first so we had the option of which way to go for the Finals, and she’s 13th after two starts in the Grassroots so it seemed like a good time to take the chance and see if she’s up to it,” says trainer Jim Haddon. “And hopefully she’s fresh while the other fillies have had to go four weeks in a row.”

Patti Royal will start from Post 5 in the first elimination and heads into the race off a 2:01.3 win in the July 31 Grassroots event at Clinton Raceway and a 2:00.3 win in a Mohawk Racetrack qualifier on Aug. 16.

“I tried to get her in to race last Tuesday at Mohawk, but they had no class for her,” explains Haddon. “Some people were interested in buying her so I put her in to qualify, I figured they could watch her qualify, and she went well in the qualifier so she’s off to Ottawa.”

Tony Kerwood piloted the Royal Ballad miss in her qualifier and encouraged Haddon to give her a shot at the Gold Series.

“He said she was well within her self. He said he never took his hands out of the hand holds,” recalls the Guelph resident. “He suggested she deserved a shot to go to the Gold.”

Haddon trains Patti Royal for his wife Robin MacLeod and father Stephen Haddon of Guelph and jokes that they may be taking on an assistant trainer role Thursday if he cannot get the day off from his full time job.

“They are helping a great deal,” says Haddon, who made a career change just five months ago. “We won’t be late to the paddock, let’s put it that way. Somehow she’ll get raced.”

Patti Royal will be on hand for the 6:30 pm start of Rideau Carleton Raceway’s Thursday evening program and will make her Gold Series debut in Race 3, while the second elimination goes postward as Race 6. The top four fillies from each elimination, plus one fifth-place finisher drawn by lot, will make a return trip to the Ottawa oval on Thursday, Sept. 1 for the fourth $130,000 Gold Final on their sophomore schedule.

For a complete list of Gold Elimination entries please go to:

http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/eridcfth.html