CAMPBELLVILLE, ON — Campbellville resident Mike Saftic continues to have a winning touch with two-year-olds, guiding a pair of pacing fillies to Gold Elimination victory at Mohawk Racetrack on Monday evening.

In the first $39,932 elimination, Saftic and Find A Penny bounced back from a miscue at the start to carve out a two length victory over Maddam Luck and Shake That Junk. The Grinfromeartoear daughter stopped the Mohawk teletimer in 1:55.1, making her the quickest of the three elimination winners.

Clark Beelby trains Find A Penny for Coyote Wynd Farms of Vancouver, BC. The filly, a $33,000 yearling purchase at last fall’s Forest City Sale, started her career with a snappy 1:57.1 qualifying win at Mohawk on June 23 and then finished second in her Flamboro Breeders Stake division at Flamboro Downs on July 6. Through just two starts the regally bred youngster has already earned $31,591.

Saftic returned to the winner’s circle five races later with H F Velma, once again using front end tactics to log the 1:55.3 victory. Scary Stars and U Make Me Laugh were just three-quarters of a length behind the winner in second and third, and Its About Motion closed hard from the back of the pack to finish fourth.

Ian Fleming of Londesborough owns HF Velma and Guelph resident Gregg McNair handles training duties on the Apaches Fame daughter, who finished third behind Find A Penny in the July 6 Flamboro Breeders Stakes event. In preparation for the stakes season, HF Velma qualified once at Mohawk on June 23, finishing second by a neck in 2:02.3, and then made her racing debut at Georgian Downs on July 1, where she finished third in an overnight event for two-year-olds.

In the second elimination, Brad Forward emulated Saftic’s front-end strategy to earn Envy her second lifetime victory. The Mach Three lass cruised around the Mohawk oval to a one and three-quarter length win in 1:55.2. Favourite Lilbitfasternow finished second and Im Just Special was two lengths behind the leader in third.

Envy learned her early lessons at Springfield in Illinois, where she captured a pair of qualifiers in 2:04 and 1:59.2 in early June, and then honed her skills in a pair of two-year-old overnight events at Hawthorne Racecourse. She captured the first in 1:58 and then made an early break and finished eighth in a contest that saw the winner sprint across the wire in 1:53.4.

Trained by Dean Nixon for Jeff Rusnak and Joyce Nixon of LaSalle, who purchased the filly after her impressive qualifiers, Envy will be looking for her third lifetime victory from Post 4 in next Monday’s $130,000 Gold Final.

The top three finishers from each elimination will join Envy, along with fourth-place finisher Its About Motion, and the field will line up behind the Mohawk Racetrack starting gate as follows:

Post 1 HF Velma

Post 2 Its About Motion

Post 3 Lilbitfasternow

Post 4 Envy

Post 5 Find A Penny

Post 6 U Make Me Laugh

Post 7 Shake That Junk

Post 8 Im Just Special

Post 9 Maddam Luck

Post 10 Scary Stars

Also Eligible 1 Justa Minx

Also Eligible 2 Charming Woman

For complete results please go to:

http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/results/data/rmohsmo.html