WINDSOR, ON — Heading into the two-year-old pacing filly regular season finale at Windsor Raceway on Oct. 10, Essex resident William Matlack is philosophical about Daisy Baraness’s chances of racing beyond next Wednesday.
“Her two-year-old career is winding down. Maybe she’ll be in Peterborough, maybe not,” says Matlack. “She needs a good finish Wednesday to maybe give her a shot.”
The top 16 point earners will compete at Peterborough’s Kawartha Downs on Oct. 20 in a pair of $30,000 Semifinals, and with one second and one third in her first three Grassroots starts Daisy Baraness is 29 points short of the current cut off.
The Rambaran daughter goes into Wednesday’s contest off a two-week break, and Matlack says she seems to have bounced back nicely from a lacklustre ninth-place effort in the Sept. 25 Grassroots event at Georgian Downs.
“She came up a little sick in her last start up at Georgian. I raced her back in five days and I thought she would be okay, but I think it took something out of her,” he admits. “Racing back in five days was not the appropriate thing to do, but now she’s had a little break, and I trained her a little bit this morning (Friday), and she trained good.”
On Sept. 20 Daisy Baraness had delivered a solid third-place finish in a 1:56.4 mile at Hiawatha Horse Park, racing against older fillies in a non-winners event. The filly paced her own mile in 1:57.2 on Sept. 20, and although she managed a similar clocking at Georgian Downs, she had no snap at the end of the mile.
Just to be sure she was ready for Wednesday’s contest, Matlack had his veterinarian check Daisy Baraness out at the beginning of the week and she received a clean bill of health. The veteran horseman notes that it was the first time the filly had ever laid eyes on a veterinarian.
“That’s a compliment to her sire maybe,” reflects Matlack, who conditions the filly for his wife Karen Matlack and son Douglas Matlack of Essex. “Rambaran raced a long time, he wasn’t a flash in the pan, and to do that you have to be sound.”
Matlack adds that the homebred filly also reminds him of her mother, Kendal Rhapsody, who was a three-time Grassroots winner as a three-year-old in 1999. Unfortunately, one of the traits Daisy Baraness did not inherit was Kendal Rhapsody’s easy-going demeanour in a horse trailer. Matlack says the first time he tried to load the filly it was a two hour process, and things have not improved significantly since.
“Anywhere I go from here is a long trip, and she’s just not a real good shipper,” he explains. “That trailer just gets rocking and rolling and shaking.”
As a result Matlack is looking forward to the brief 20 minute trip to Windsor Raceway on Wednesday, where Daisy Baraness will make her last regular season start from Post 3 in the last of four $27,499 Grassroots divisions. Among the fillies she will face is recent 1:52.1 winner A Fiesty Affair from Post 7.
“That one horse of Bill Elliott’s paced in 1:52 and a piece the other day at Mohawk, and we’re not going to beat her, I’m not naive enough to think I can,” says the pragmatic horseman. “I’m just hoping she can maybe get a trip and beat somebody.”
Post time for Windsor Raceway’s Wednesday evening program is 7 pm, and the two-year-old pacing fillies will wrap up their Grassroots regular season in Races 1, 3, 5, and 8.
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