ELORA, ON — Grand River Raceway wraps up its inaugural Ontario Sires Stakes season this Friday with seven Grassroots divisions for the talented two-year-old pacing fillies.
All of the top fillies will be on hand, attempting to pad their point total in the last regular season event of their freshman season, including local filly Fabulous Flori. Owned and bred by Fergus resident Paul Lindsey, the filly currently sits second in the division standings with 170 points earned through three wins, one third and one fourth in five Grassroots starts.
“She’s pretty push button. There’s not too much fancy about her,” says trainer Mark Austin. “She just goes out and does her work.”
Never flashy, Fabulous Flori attracted so little attention as a yearling that Lindsey ended up keeping the daughter of Rambaran and Fabulous Choice.
“She was just a big, plain filly in the bunch and nobody liked her, that’s why I didn’t have her sold,” recalls Lindsey. “I couldn’t sell her so I had to train her.”
The workmanlike filly will start from Post 6 in the seventh race on Saturday, and Austin hopes Fabulous Flori and driver Dave Boughton will be able to make use of the filly’s preferred racing style.
“She actually races better from behind,” says Austin. “It seems to maintain her interest more, and she likes to pass horses.”
Through eight starts this season Fabulous Flori has earned four wins, one second and two thirds for earnings of $37,431. She heads into Friday’s contest off a three week mini-vacation which followed a pair of victories, the first in an overnight event at Hiawatha Horse Park on Sept. 18 and the second in a Grassroots division at Sudbury Downs on Sept. 25.
“I’ve just been jogging her lightly but I trained her up Saturday, so she should be ready to go Friday night,” says Austin, who is also focused on getting the filly to peak for the Grassroots Semifinal at Hiawatha on Oct. 28 and the $100,000 Final on Nov. 6.
“Depending on how she comes out of the race Friday, if she is feeling good I’ll probably race her in the (Oct. 22) Trillium at London (Western Fair Raceway),” explains the Fergus resident. “That will give her a race in between Friday and the Semifinal and then I won’t have to train her in between.”
The top 16 point earners from the six regular season events will compete in a pair of $30,000 Grassroots Semifinals on Oct. 28 with the top four finishers from each Semifinal returning to Hiawatha Horse Park the following week for the Grassroots Championship.
Fabulous Flori and her peers will attempt to grab the last few points toward the season final in Races 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10 and 11 on Grand River Raceway’s Friday evening program, which gets under way at 7:27 pm.