GLOUCESTER, ON — Ontario’s talented two-year-old trotting fillies head to the nation’s capital on Wednesday for the third Gold Series contest of their five-event season. Two Eliminations will go postward over Rideau Carleton Raceway’s five-eighths mile oval and Jason Gilchrist is hoping he and Sephora can finally earn their way into a Gold Final after running into bad luck in their first two attempts.
The 20-year-old horseman has guided Sephora to one win, one second and one third in six starts, but they have been no closer than fifth in two Gold Elimination efforts. In the season opener at Flamboro Downs on July 6 another filly made a break on the inside and stepped into Sephora, causing her to go off stride, and in the second event at Woodbine Racetrack on July 29 Gilchrist asked driver Keith Oliver to fill in and the duo crossed inside the pylons and were placed back from third to tenth.
“She’s a two-year-old trotting filly so she’s a kind of a little more the boss than if she was a pacer,” says the Spencerville resident. “Probably her first race in Sudbury was her best race, but she’s raced well in Montreal in the overnights.”
The King Conch daughter, bred and owned by Dr. Frederick Albert of Prescott, captured her career debut at Sudbury Downs on June 29, trotting to a Trillium Series win in 2:06.1. She also posted a solid second-place result to Gold Final winner Independent Woman in the July 20 Trillium event at Hanover Raceway.
On Wednesday Sephora will make her bid for a Gold Final berth from Post 5 in the fourth race and her trainer-driver was pleased to see division leaders Mikestory and Independent Woman draw into the other elimination.
“That other division, the headliners are all in there,” he says. “But whether we’ll have the tougher division in the long run, I don’t know.”
Sephora and Gilchrist will need a top four finish to secure a berth in the Aug. 28 Gold Final. Only the top four finishers from each elimination, plus one fifth-place finisher drawn by lot, will advance to the $130,000 second round.
If the filly misses another Gold Final Gilchrist and Albert may consider making a move into the Grassroots Series, where they thought she was headed during her early education last winter.
“She never looked like she was that talented. We thought she’d be a real nice Grassroots filly,” explains Gilchrist. “It was late, about a month before we qualified and schooled her, that she started to look like she was going to be something. We have her sister, Equine Grace, and she’s doing all right in the Grassroots, but this one’s the nicer filly of the two.”
Among the fillies Sephora will face in Race 4 is Clarice Marie from Post 7, a Gold Elimination winner and the runner-up to Mikestory in the Gold Final in the Woodbine event. Mikestory will make a bid for a fourth straight win from Post 6 in the sixth race, while the season opening Gold Final winner Independent Woman will attempt to jump start a second win streak from Post 4.
Rideau Carleton Raceway’s first race heads onto the track at 6:30 pm on Wednesday evening and the exciting two-year-old trotting fillies will light up the Gloucester oval in Races 4 and 6.