HANOVER, ON — Ontario’s exciting three-year-old pacing fillies roar into Hanover Raceway this Saturday in the second last regular season Grassroots event of their career.

Currently sitting tenth in the division standings, Lifes A Trip is among the tightly bunched group of fillies who need a few more points to secure a berth in the post season, and the Jim Ritchie trainee will be looking to garner hers from Post 2 in the first $18,193 Grassroots contest.

“She’s kind of a handy horse,” says Ritchie. “She’s real good on the turns, that’s her bonus. She’s not real big, but she’s kind of handy.”

In her first three Grassroots starts Lifes A Trip has posted one win, one second and one fourth for a total of 83 points. The Northern Luck daughter raced just three times as a two-year-old and skipped the first Grassroots event of the season in favour of furthering her education in Clinton Raceway’s Central Huron Pacing Series.

“When she started, she cut off two guys at Clinton in her first two starts there,” recalls Ritchie. “She got disqualified two times because she didn’t want to sit in a hole, but she settled down, and now she’s good.”

The Grand Valley resident, who trains and drives Lifes A Trip for Paul Ritchie of Orangeville and Greg Majkowski of Novi, MI, says the filly is now as easy to get along with on the racetrack as she is in the barn.

“She’s really nice. You can jog her with two fingers and she’s easy on herself,” says the horseman. “She’s very good mannered, very quiet, very gentle; she’s lazy if anything. She’s still fat as fat halfway through the season.”

Since mending her errant ways, Lifes A Trip has amassed five wins, three seconds and one third in 15 starts for earnings of $42,612. The half-sister to $187,346 winner Student Driver posted her personal best 1:56.4 at Flamboro Downs on July 6, and Ritchie hopes she can maintain her momentum through the next six weeks. The top 16 point earners from the regular season will battle in a pair of Semifinals at Kawartha Downs on Oct. 18, with the top four from each Semifinal earning a berth in the Oct. 27 Grassroots Championship.

“I don’t know if she can handle the big girls. There are some pretty good horses racing in the Grassroots, like Canadette and Quail Seelster,” he explains. “I’m still not sure if she’ll do against them in the Semifinal at Kawartha Downs.”

A top finish in Saturday’s contest will give Lifes A Trip the chance to try her hand against the top fillies over Kawartha’s five-eighths mile oval, so Ritchie is not looking any further ahead than Hanover’s first race, which goes postward at 7:25 pm.

The talented three-year-old pacing fillies will also square off in Races 2, 4, 5, 8 and 10 on Hanover Raceway’s Saturday evening program.

For complete entries please go to:

http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/ehnvrsa.html