DUNDAS, ON — All eyes will be on Flamboro Downs this Sunday as the Dundas oval presents its 28th Confederation Cup program. Warming up the crowd for the $567,000 Cup are Ontario Sires Stakes Gold Finals for the two-year-old pacing colts and three-year-old trotting colts.
The trotting colts are featured in Race 6, just before the first elimination for the main event, and breeder Victor Bielik will be on pins and needles watching to see if elimination winners Loose Change Louie and Samuel Oaks can rise to the occasion again this week. Bielik bred and raised both colts on his Paris area farm and was delighted when last week’s eliminations gave him not one, but two opportunities to go trackside for a winner’s circle presentation.
“Nobody was more surprised than I was,” says Bielik. “And what makes it more ironic is they were both born on the same day, on the same farm — they were born at Dr. David Grant’s place, Oaklea Farm — then they came here the same day with their dams.”
A relative newcomer to the breeding business — Samuel Oaks and Loose Change Louie are from his third crop — Bielik credits many area horse people with advancing his knowledge.
“Over the years we always loved horses and now that I’m retired we took to breeding them. Dr. Grant, Brian Webster, many people were very helpful,” says the former fast food franchise owner. “We knew very, very little about horses, other than they ran.”
After spending their first year cavorting on Bielik’s farm, the colts went to the 2002 Canadian Classic Yearling Sale where Samuel Oaks fetched $23,000 from Paul Walker of Owen Sound and Carscot Stables of Toronto and Loose Change Louie was hammered down for $4,000 to Brent Belore and Ronald Thompson of Embro, Michael Robblee of Woodstock and George Cuthbert of Ingersoll.
Last season the breeder watched with interest as Loose Change Louie achieved success at the Grassroots level, earning a spot in the $100,000 Final before being coming up sick just before the Oct. 31 event, and Samuel Oaks posted a second-place finish in a $107,277 division of the Champlain Stakes before an injury ended his freshman campaign.
This season Loose Change Louie has amassed three wins, three seconds and two thirds from 12 starts for earnings of $81,313, while Samuel Oaks boasts five wins, including two Gold Eliminations and one Gold Final, one second and one third in nine starts for earnings of $133,665.
“Even though they are not mine any more, the people who bought them, I wish them all the luck in the world,” says Bielik, who owns just three trotting broodmares. “We’ll be down there rooting them on.”
Bielik’s visit to the winner’s circle after Samuel Oaks’ elimination win brought the breeder high praise from trotting specialist Paul Walker.
“I told him that’s a pretty exceptional thing,” says Walker. “He was a pretty happy man, as well he should be. That doesn’t happen very often, breeding the winners of two Gold Eliminations.”
Walker will send Samuel Oaks after a second straight Gold Final victory from Post 5 and will be waiting to see what the horses to his inside do before deciding whether to return to the front end strategy that worked in the elimination round.
“All the good leavers have the inside, which should make it an interesting race,” says the veteran horseman. “He’s not a tremendously fast leaver, he has some speed, but not right off the gate. And he can be a little hard headed sometimes, but he races good off the pace if I can get him to settle.”
Among the horses starting from Walker’s left is Loose Change Louie, who gets Post 2 in Race 3.
“He can leave pretty good,” acknowledges trainer-driver Brent Belore. “But he can race from the back too. And a lot of those other colts don’t get around a half as good as he does.”
The two-year-old pacing colts also demonstrated their prowess on a half-mile track in last week’s elimination round and victors Must Be Matt, Zooka and Rigio Hanover have drawn Posts 3, 4 and 7 for the $130,000 Final. Trainer Ben Wallace will be in for an action-packed evening as the Milton resident harnesses Zooka and Winning Matters in the pacing colt Gold Final and takes a run at Confederation Cup glory with all-time Ontario Sires Stakes record holder Armbro Balmoral from Post 6 in the first Cup elimination.
Wallace trains the talented Zooka for his partner James Millier of Dorchester and will send out Winning Matters from Post 8 for partners John Palcit Holdings Inc. of Amherstburg and NHL-er Chris Gratton of Brantford.
Post time for Sunday’s rich program is 6:20 pm with the two-year-old pacing colt Gold Final featured as Race 3, the three-year-old trotting colts squaring off for Ontario Sires Stakes glory in Race 6, Confederation Cup eliminations slated for Races 7, 8 and 9 and the Final going behind the gate in Race 11.