CLINTON, ON — When the three-year-old pacing fillies kick off Clinton Raceway’s Ontario Sires Stakes season on Sunday, Ken Raspin is hoping Luck Alice can extend the run of extraordinarily good luck he has enjoyed in his second year as a Standardbred owner.
“I had Quarter Horses years ago, but Quarter Horses never really took off,” says the Goderich resident. “So I got involved with Standardbreds two years ago and we’ve been lucky with the five we own. They call me spoiled in the barn.”
Luck Alice has recorded one win and one second in two Grassroots starts this season and currently sits in a tie for fourth in the division standings. Matty McGee captured a three-year-old pacing colt Grassroots event at Hanover Raceway on July 1 and Raspin and his partner Gerry Sparling of Val Spar Stables are headed to Woodstock Raceway this Saturday to watch Luck Alice’s two-year-old half sister Val’s Vision make her first Grassroots start.
“It’s a great program, the Ontario Sires Stakes. In Hanover it was packed on Saturday night and it was a bad night,” says Raspin. “My partner and myself, one of us try to make every race.”
So far Raspin and West Hill resident Sparling have followed Luck Alice to Quinte Exhibition Raceway in Belleville and Western Fair Raceway in London. The daughter of Camluck and Aahptometrist scored her Grassroots victory in the May 22 season opener, pacing around the Quinte half-mile in 2:00.3. At Western Fair on June 16 Luck Alice closed well to finish second in a 1:58.4 mile.
Trainer Stanley Atkinson opted to skip the third Grassroots event, on June 27 at Georgian Downs, and Luck Alice heads into Sunday’s event off a fourth-place finish at Woodstock Raceway on July 4.
“She’s come along really nicely in the last month or so,” says Raspin. “After each race she’s been going out into the paddock for some grass and she seems to really enjoy that. She’s looking the best she’s ever looked in the last month.
“Stan’s done a real nice job with her,” he adds. “She’s a treat.”
Luck Alice will try to pad her Grassroots point total from Post 4 in the eleventh race at Clinton Raceway, facing off against a field of five Grassroots veterans and a pair of newcomers to the sophomore Ontario Sires Stakes scene.
A total of $120,000 will be up for grabs at the popular half-mile oval on Sunday, with the three-year-old pacing fillies squaring off in Grassroots action in Races 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11. The fillies will kick the Clinton Raceway program off at 1:30 pm.
For complete entries please go to:
http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/eclntnsu.html