INNISFIL, ON — Among the most innovative racetracks in Ontario, Georgian Downs has crafted two nights of racing in the coming weeks that have fans buzzing.
This Saturday, June 21 the best three-year-old trotters and pacers in Ontario will converge on the Innisfil oval for ten Gold Series Eliminations, with the top nine from each division returning Saturday, June 28 for their respective $120,000 Gold Final. A total of $400,000 will be on the line this weekend, with the purse swelling to over $1 million dollars the following Saturday, when the Gold Finals will be paired with the finals of the track’s Masters Series for aged horses.
“We planned the Masters Series around the OSS Gold Finals, we wanted to make one big night out of it,” says Jackie Warner, Georgian Downs’ Marketing and Public Relations Manager. “We started working on it last November.”
Among the outstanding horses making their way to the track for this Saturday’s elimination round are last season’s freshman trotting colt champion Windsong Espoir; three-year-old pacing colts Keystone Horatio and Deuce Seelster, who captured a Burlington Stake division and North America Cup elimination respectively; three-year-old pacing fillies Has An Attitude, who captured her Fan Hanover elimination, and world record holder Voelz Hanover; and three-year-old trotting filly Warrawee June, an Elegantimage elimination winner and runner-up in the $588,706 final.
Combine the exceptional calibre of the Ontario-sired sophomores with their aged peers in the Saturday, June 28 event Georgian Downs has dubbed �Gold Rush,’ and Warner expects fans will be treated to a night that will go down in Canadian racing history.
“Last night (June 17), and last Tuesday night (June 10), we had the first two legs of the Masters Series and it was incredible racing, absolutely incredible,” she explains. “We’ve never had a night with $1 million in purses. The best horses in North America, and the top drivers, are going to be here. It will be an outstanding night of racing.”
A handful of locally owned horses are hoping to grab a piece of the Gold Rush pie, and the first hurdle is a top finish in this Saturday’s elimination round.
Thornton resident David Byron will send out Gabrielles Girl in one of two three-year-old pacing filly Gold Eliminations, and the trainer is hoping she can make a successful leap into the upper echelons of the Ontario Sires Stakes program. In the Grassroots season opener the filly was a runaway winner in her division, hitting the wire at Windsor Raceway 11 lengths ahead of the field in a personal best 1:54.4.
“It’s our home track, it’s five minutes away, so we thought we’d take a shot,” says Byron. “She’s trained over it and raced over it, so you hope that will help her.”
In addition to her Grassroots victory, Gabrielles Girl was a 1:55.2 winner at Georgian Downs on April 19, and has also amassed two seconds, three thirds and earnings of $27,230 for breeder Ian Macintosh of Alliston and his partner John Van Reenen of Cayuga.
Stephen Byron will pilot the daughter of Camotion and Cheryls Place from Post 7 in the ninth race Saturday, and faces a tough group that includes Has An Attitude from Post 1 and May Gold Elimination winner A Fiesty Affair from Post 3.
“We got the seven-hole, which isn’t great, and there are two eliminations and I think maybe ours might be the tougher of the two, but you can’t do much about that,” says Byron. “We’ll find out if we can compete in there or not.”
While the proximity of Saturday’s elimination to his Thornton home was one factor in his decision to move Gabrielles Girl up to the Gold Series, the size of track the second Grassroots event will be raced on was another. Clinton Raceway will host the Grassroots fillies this Sunday, and Byron was not confident his leggy filly would successfully navigate the tight turns on the track’s half-mile oval.
“She was a big growthy filly as a two-year-old, her back end was higher than her front end, but she always had a nice way of going,” recalls Byron. “We were hoping for a Grassroots filly, and I still think that’s probably where she belongs, but with her we’ll have to stay away from the half-mile tracks. We’ll have to pick our spots all year.
“We’ll take a shot here on the five-eighths, and there’s the consolation,” he adds.
The top four fillies in each elimination, and one fifth-place finisher, will advance to the June 28 Gold Final, and the next nine finishers will be eligible for the Gold Consolation. While he would prefer the $120,000 final, Byron would settle for the $20,000 Cconsolation just to have an opportunity to be part of the �Gold Rush.’
“It’s going to be an exciting night with all those Masters Series Finals too,” says the horseman. “We’re hoping we can get into the Final, and if not, the consolation.”
All the excitement of the wild, wild west gets under way this Saturday, June 21 at 7:25 pm with the 10 Gold Eliminations slated as Race 1, and 4 through 12, on the Georgian Downs program.
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