LONDON, ON — When Call Me Yours parades onto Western Fair Raceway this Friday in her first ever Gold Final, Stephen Gillard will be watching a scene he could envision from the moment he put a harness on the filly 18 months ago.

“She is doing everything we expected her to do. She was a good filly right from the day we broke her as a yearling,” explains the Tavistock resident, who bred, owns and trains Call Me Yours. “We expected big things last year, and it didn’t work out, so we just had to be patient and wait for this year to come around.”

As a freshman Call Me Yours made four starts, posting two wins and one third, but came up injured after a 1:54.2 triumph at Mohawk Racetrack in late July. Gillard laid the filly off and waited until mid-January of this season to resume the young pacer’s training regimen.

After jogging and training over his Tavistock farm track for three and a half months, Gillard shipped Call Me Yours to Western Fair for a qualifier on May 2. The daughter of Your Nemesis and Lucky Call romped to a 1:58.1 victory, so Gillard dropped her into a non-winners of $40,000 class at the London oval on May 12. Once again, Call Me Yours was an effortless winner, hitting the wire three and three-quarter lengths ahead of the competition in 1:56.4.

Off that effort, Gillard figured the homebred had earned her shot at the Gold Series fillies when they came to town. In the same Gold Elimination last Friday as the freshman Gold Series and Grassroots champions, Jody Jamieson piloted Call Me Yours to a solid third-place finish, dodging around fading pacesetter Windsong Eva and laying down a :27.4 final quarter.

“She came home and just devoured her supper,” says Gillard. “I jogged her the next day, and when she jogs, she bucks and plays for the first couple rounds, and she did that Saturday morning, which I thought was pretty amazing. That was a stiff mile she was in Friday night.”

Call Me Yours and Jamieson will tackle the Gold Final field from Post 4 on Friday, with elimination winners Chancey Lady and A Fiesty Affair starting from Post 3 and Post 5. In against the top fillies from the elimination round, Gillard expects to see Jamieson adopt come-from-behind tactics again this week.

“I think she’s destined for a second or third over trip at best,” he predicts. “At this time, I’m not sure she’s good enough to blast out of there, but she’s certainly good enough to race with them and there’s more to the mile than the beginning.”

In addition to taking a run at the $140,000 purse and Gold Final hardware, Gillard is also using Friday’s contest as a decision making tool. Like many of her peers, Call Me Yours is eligible to the Fan Hanover at Mohawk Racetrack on June 7, and her performance on Friday will determine whether she gets a shot at North America’s best.

“Friday is a big night, because she’s paid into the Fan Hanover, which is the following Saturday. It’s really up to her. I’d like her to decide for us whether she belongs in the Fan Hanover,” Gillard explains. “A good start in the race Friday, with the company she’s in with, is a good measuring stick for us.

“We wanted to pay her into the Fan Hanover because we wanted one kick at the big girls,” he adds.

That kick at the top fillies in North America has added meaning for Gillard and his family. Call Me Yours is a third generation product of their small breeding program. Gillard bred and raised Your Nemesis, who earned $427,418 in his racing career before returning to Tavistock to begin stallion duty.

Call Me Yours is from the stallion’s first crop, so watching the filly succeed, not only in the Ontario Sires Stakes program, but against the grand circuit fillies, would be especially rewarding.

The filly will do her best to propel Gillard and his family to the next level of competition with a strong effort in Friday’s $140,000 Gold Final, Race 6 on Western Fair Raceway’s action-packed May 30 program, which also features the $280,000 Molson Pace Final in Race 10. Post time is 7:35 pm.

For complete entries please go to: http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/elonfr.html#N6