SUDBURY, ON — Thirty-eight of the province’s most talented three-year-old trotting fillies will head north on Saturday as Sudbury Downs hosts the first of five Ontario Sires Stakes events on its 2006 calendar.
Hoping the trip results in a second Grassroots trophy is Garth Gordon trainee Rumours, who will start from Post 5 in the last $19,536 division. The Angus Hall daughter clocked an impressive 2:02.1 victory in the May 22 Grassroots season opener at Grand River Raceway and Gordon hopes she finds Sudbury’s half-mile oval just as appealing.
“Dave Boughton drove her that night and he gave her a really good trip. He left with her and got a two-hole trip,” recalls the veteran horseman, who trains Rumours for Kirk Farfaras of London. “That was the first time she’d raced on a half.”
The Guelph resident was so impressed with the filly’s tour around Grand River Raceway that he almost sent her off to tackle the Gold Series fillies over Western Fair Raceway’s half-mile oval on June 23.
“I was thinking of racing her in the Gold at Western Fair, but I changed my mind,” he says. “She’s been a nice surprise. I hope she can continue on.”
Rumours heads into Saturday’s start off a fifth-place finish in a May 30 overnight event at Woodbine Racetrack that saw her close hard to finish fifth after falling well behind during the early stages of the race.
“She had a rough trip in her last start at Woodbine,” notes Gordon. “She had to come from a long way back, first up.”
Through seven starts this season Rumours has amassed two wins and one third in seven starts, for earnings of $18,160. The half-sister to former Gold Final winner Incredible Iam ($195,205) did not race at two due to an injury, but Gordon says she has shown no ill effects through the early stages of her sophomore campaign.
“She really hasn’t done anything wrong,” he says. “She made a break at Woodbine (May 18), but I had a pair of bell boots on her and I think she was catching the bell boots. I took them off and she’s been fine.
“She doesn’t wear anything except a head pole on the inside, a set of bandages on the back and a pair of trotting hopples,” he adds.
Among the fillies that Rumours and driver Shayne Barrington will face in Saturday’s ninth race are five fillies who made their sophomore Ontario Sires Stakes debut at Grand River Raceway, one who started the season at the Gold Series level and one who will make her first provincial start this weekend. Gordon and Barrington will have their eye on former Gold Series competitor Fin De Maye, who will start from Post 6, and their Grassroots peer Strikingly Luvable from Post 7, one of five fillies Wayne Henry will harness in Saturday’s contest.
The three-year-old fillies will warm things up over the Sudbury Downs oval in Races 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9 on Saturday, with the track’s first race going postward at 7:15 pm.
For complete entries please go to:
http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/esudbysa.html