GLOUCESTER, ON — She may be the most misnamed horse in the province, but Serenity Seelster delivered an impressive effort to land a berth in Sunday night’s $130,000 Gold Final at Rideau Carleton Raceway so trainer John MacMillan is finding the filly’s quirks a little easier to bear this week.
“Going into the Sires Stakes season we weren’t sure if we had a Gold filly or a Grassroots filly,” explains the Spencerville resident, who shares ownership on the three-year-old pacer with Glenn Bechtel of Kingston and Garth Bechtel of Caledon Village. “The other night she showed us we probably have a Gold filly. A 1:54.2 mile over Rideau Carleton, late in May, on a cold night, is a good mile.”
Last weekend’s runner-up performance in the Gold Elimination was a long way from where MacMillan and his partners expected to be when they acquired Serenity Seelster in August 2004.
“We didn’t buy her to be a stakes horse,” says MacMillan. “I was living in Toronto when I bought her and I thought she would be a decent filly for the “B” tracks, in the overnights.
“I had watched her previous handlers try to qualify her and I liked a lot of things about her,” says the horseman, noting that the filly’s tendency to run sideways across the racetrack when something unusual comes into her view was not one of them. “I like fillies with attitude, and I thought if we could channel that energy she could be good.”
Less than a month after moving into MacMillan’s barn the Camluck miss had posted her first victory, and she made two more trips to the winner’s circle before the end of her freshman season.
This year Serenity Seelster boasts a record of four wins and one second in nine starts, including victories in one leg and the final of the Miss Vera Bars Series at Woodbine Racetrack in January and two legs of the Silver Reign Series at Woodbine in March. The biggest disappointment MacMillan and the Bechtels have suffered so far was when the capricious filly made a break from Post 1 as the favourite in the Silver Reign Final and finished fifth.
In a worrisome case of deja vu, Serenity Seelster will start from Post 1 in Sunday’s Gold Final, but MacMillan is relatively confident there are no bogeymen lurking in the Rideau Carleton infield.
“I definitely would not want the rail at Woodbine, because of the Jumbotron, but I don’t see it being a problem at Rideau,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything there to bother her.”
Heading into Sunday’s Final MacMillan will concentrate on keeping Serenity Seelster relaxed and happy, no easy feat with a filly that can be difficult to catch in her stall and frequently turns her nose up at the offerings in her feed bowl. However, he says the biggest hurdle in the preparations for the $130,000 battle has already been overcome.
“The most important preparation was getting Tony Kerwood a flight here,” says MacMillan with a chuckle. “Tony has a special relationship with her. He’s a driver who has won almost $50 million in his career, and to drive her you have to call upon all that experience and knowledge. That’s what Tony Kerwood brings us.”
And while MacMillan leaves race strategy to Kerwood, he does not expect Serenity Seelster to be powering away from the starting gate the way she did in several of her victories this spring.
“She can race on the front, but she won’t in this race,” he says. “I think there will be a lot of attacks on the lead. There are a lot of fillies in this race with a lot of speed for an eighth of a mile, and if you are the one that has to put them away, you are going to get put away yourself.
“I’d rather be second or third on the rail and then hopefully Kerwood can weave through horses and get a piece of it.”
With the depth of talent in Race 6, MacMillan is not predicting a victory, but he is hopeful that Serenity Seelster will deliver her best effort in front of the hometown crowd.
“It would be good if we could be close,” he says simply.
Ottawa and area fans can catch the local filly and her peers in the sixth race on Rideau Carleton Raceway’s Sunday evening program, which gets under way at 6:30 pm.