SARNIA, ON — Hiawatha Horse Park will launch the 2006 Ontario Sires Stakes season on Thursday evening with a pair of $50,000 Gold Series Eliminations for the three-year-old trotting fillies.
During their freshman campaign this group of fillies was heralded as the most talented crop of trotters ever bred in Ontario, and their early season results have done little to dispute that claim. Six fillies posted wins in qualifying action and three have already appeared in the winner’s circle, including Helen’s Melons, who won a leg and the final of the Celias Counsel Series at Woodbine Racetrack, and Oaklea Odessa, who stormed around the Woodbine oval in 1:56 on May 2.
Hoping to find her place among the gifted Gold competitors is last season’s Grassroots Champion Porsche Hall, who is trained and driven by Sarnia’s Terry Kerr. The Angus Hall daughter, who captured four of five starts at two, will be handicapped in her Gold Series debut by the outside Post 9 in Thursday’s seventh race.
“I’m not too happy with the draw,” laments Kerr. “She’ll have to overcome it I guess.”
Porsche Hall heads into the $50,008 elimination off a 2:01.2 qualifying win at Hiawatha Horse Park on April 29, and Kerr says she has continued to train well in the last two weeks.
“I qualified her the first weekend they had qualifiers at Hiawatha and she trotted a good mile, and I’ve trained her back a couple more times at pretty good speed,” says the veteran horseman, a two-time winner of the Lampman Cup award for the top driver in the Ontario Sires Stakes program. “Last Thursday (May 11) I trained her pretty good over Pete (Core’s) farm track, it’s a half mile. Hopefully she’s tight enough.”
Last season Porsche Hall was quick on her feet through the early stages of her races, sitting no worse than second by the first quarter in all five starts, but Kerr admits he is not sure what strategy he will use from the outside Post 9 on Thursday.
“She left the gate every start last year; I don’t know what she’ll do Thursday. I’ll just have to wait until the word “Go” is given,” he says wryly. “She was great off the gate, but when she got to the front she followed really good too. She was perfect, just like a Cadillac.”
Breeders Bet Max Stables Inc. of Casco, MI and Benenati Inc. of Clinton Township, MI own the winner of $84,212, who faces off against two-time early season winner Oaklea Odessa at Post 5.
“Hopefully she can make the step up,” says Kerr of Porsche Hall’s Gold Series debut. “I would have liked to try her in the Gold at the end of last year, she was just so good her last two starts.”
Kerr and Porsche Hall will be looking for a top four finish in the second elimination on Thursday. The top four finishers from each elimination, plus one fifth-place finisher drawn by lot, will return to Hiawatha Horse Park on Thursday, May 25 for the first $130,000 Gold Final on their sophomore schedule.
Among the fillies fans will be keeping an eye on in the first elimination — Race 5 on the 7:30 pm program — are Exquisite Way, who logged a smart qualifying win at Mohawk Racetrack on May 9 and will start from the advantageous Post 1, freshman Gold Final winners Birminghim and Lisa’s Mission from Posts 2 and 5, and Celias Counsel Final winner Helens Melons from Post 7.