WOODSTOCK, ON — Ontario’s talented two-year-old pacing fillies are the stars of Woodstock Raceway’s Family Fun Day this Saturday, competing for a total of $144,000 in eight Grassroots divisions.
Hoping for a solid result in the fourth Grassroots contest is Luckisaladytonight, who will start from Post 3 for owners Doug Millard of Woodstock and Peter and Ellen Davis of Arva. The Camluck daughter heads into Saturday’s event off a fourth-place finish in her Grassroots debut at Kawartha Downs on July 19 and her owners are hoping the leggy filly can successfully navigate Woodstock’s half-mile oval and add to her eight Grassroots points.
“She’s a big mare, I don’t know about the half-mile, but at least we’ve avoided the dreaded six or seven hole,” says Davis. “She got into a shuffle in Peterborough. Sometimes it’s too early to move and then you find yourself at the wrong end of the bus, that’s what happened to us up there.”
The fact that Luckisaladytonight will even appear in Saturday’s contest is of special satisfaction to Davis and Millard, who were unsure that she would ever race after losing an eye in her first days of life.
“She had a displaced lens that got into her tear glands and they had to take her to (the University of) Guelph,” recalls Davis. “Doug and I pretty well said put her down, but one of the girls down there was quite sure that she was going to be all right.
“As soon as we win one race we have to send her a picture, so hopefully that will happen before the year’s out.”
Terry Kerr will drive Luckisaladytonight and Davis’s other starter Cammissy on Saturday. The veteran reinsman will send Cammissy, a half-sister to Luckisaladytonight, after her second Grassroots win from Post 4 in the eighth race.
“Cammissy is a smaller mare that can take a ride and likes to come out of a hole,” says Davis. “Of the two mares Cammissy should be a good two-year-old, while the other mare might be better as a three-year-old.”
Cammissy logged a 2:00.1 victory in the Grassroots season opener at Elmira Raceway on July 4, but did not race as well in the July 19 event at Kawartha Downs, finishing a fading fifth. After the race Davis had the track’s veterinarian examine the Camluck daughter and found that she was battling a virus. After spending the last two weeks treating the infection, the veteran horseman is hopeful that Cammissy will be back to her early season form on Saturday.
“We worked the pair of them today and they worked good, and we had the little mare scoped and she scoped clean,” he says. “So we won’t have too many excuses Saturday — we’ll have to try and think of some after.”
Davis’s fillies will join 59 of their peers in the hunt for Grassroots points and provincial lucre on Saturday. The fillies star in Races 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 13 and 14 on the 1:15 pm program, which also features a host of fun-filled family activities.
The first 200 children to visit with Peanut, the World’s Smallest Horse, will receive a free photograph of themselves with the pint-sized equine. Children will also enjoy face painting, balloon animals and receive an Ontario Sires Stakes colouring book. Parents will appreciate the $1 hot dogs and pop, and can purchase a hat for just $1 with the coupon in the official race program. Fans can also catch the simulcast of the historic Hambletonian Trot.