WINDSOR, ON — When the two-year-old pacing colts head back to Windsor Raceway on Sunday evening for the last $130,000 Gold Final of the season, trainer Nat Varty figures Reason To Smile has at least one significant advantage over the other eight colts in the race.
“Not only is he good, he’s the freshest colt on the circuit right now,” says the Warsaw resident, who trains Reason To Smile for Perfect World Enterprises of Old Westbury, NY. “They were going at it hard in June and July and we hadn’t beaten 2:15 yet. This horse is just coming into form now.”
With only three starts to his credit Reason To Smile has five fewer than any other colt in the race, but his resume makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. Since capturing his Oct. 6 debut in an impressive 1:54.1, the Grinfromeartoear son has added one second and last week’s 1:54.4 Gold Elimination victory to his record for earnings of $32,339.
“He’s a typical Grin, a thick horse that carries a lot of weight,” notes Varty. “He’s still got a lot of baby fat on him. When he gets trim, when all the baby fat comes off and he is racehorse tight, I think it’s going to be pretty wild what this horse can do.”
The colt was late starting his freshman lessons after having minor surgery as a yearling, but Varty says it was always clear Reason To Smile was going to be a contender at some level of the Ontario Sires Stakes program.
“He wasn’t even broke until the first of the year, but it was pretty apparent early that he was of some quality,” says the trainer. “You never know how good they’ll be, but he handled himself well.”
Reason To Smile will try and add a Gold Final victory to his impressive record from Post 6 on Sunday and Varty is confident the move to the outer half of the track will not bother the tractable youngster, who captured his elimination with a wire-to-wire effort from Post 1 last week.
“I don’t think it’s a horrible spot. I like that fact that Putasmileon drew the nine. I like drawing inside a horse I think is a good one,” says the 32-year-old horseman. “And he can kind of race any way. He’s got incredible gate speed, or he can snap up from off the pace. He’s like a pro, he acts like an old horse.”
With another solid effort on Sunday, Reason To Smile could move into the division’s Top 10 and extend his Sires Stakes season through the Nov. 8 $300,000 Super Final. Last week’s victory earned him 50 points, and the current cut off for the Top 10 is 75.
In addition to Putasmileon, Reason To Smile and driver Chris Christoforou will face stiff competition from elimination winner Uptown Casino at Post 8 and two-time Gold Elimination winner Apache Limo from Post 2. Putasmileon and Apache Limo are part of trainer Bill Robinson’s strong two-year-old pacing colt string, which also includes Cozy Xample (Post 5) and Up Front Rustler (Post 7).
The colts will battle for top honours in the $130,000 Gold Final in Race 11 on Windsor Raceway’s Sunday evening program, which sees the first race go postward at 6:30 pm.