DRESDEN — Dresden Raceway throws open the doors on another family friendly season of harness racing this Monday at 1 pm, featuring eight divisions of three-year-old pacing fillies in their first Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots event of the season.
The fillies will battle for provincial glory during the track’s Victoria Day celebrations and the calibre of this year’s contestants could place Armbro Wand’s 1:55.2 track record in serious jeopardy. Among the fillies taking aim on the record, set in Ontario Sires Stakes action last year, is Chatham resident Robert Chapple’s Apaches Angel who makes 2003 Ontario Sires Stakes debut from Post 3 in the first race.
“She should race good over there. Fred Jewell trained her back at Dresden all winter,” says trainer Gregg McNair. “We were even thinking about going to Elmira (for the Gold Series) with her, but there are some pretty good fillies racing so I thought I’d stick with the Grassroots.”
A regular competitor on the Grassroots circuit at two, Apaches Angel earned $26,196 from one win and five seconds in 10 starts and she heads into Monday’s battle off a pair of solid qualifiers and a fourth-place showing in a non-winners of two races event at Mohawk Racetrack May 8.
“We didn’t get a very good read on her at Mohawk, she got interfered with at the head of the stretch,” explains McNair. “But she still paced a good mile.”
Greg Wright, Jr. will pilot the filly for Chapple and McNair on Monday and will also handle the lines on McNair’s other starter Feathery Fame, who drew Post 6 in Race 15.
“She’s got a tough post,” says McNair, who trains the Apaches Fame daughter for his mother Gwendolyn McNair of Walkerton. “You don’t want to over race her in her first start.”
A major player last season, winning a Grassroots Semifinal and finishing third in the $100,000 Championship, Feathery Fame qualified May 9 at Mohawk in preparation for her sophomore debut.
“She was one of the top Grassroots mares last year,” says her trainer. “I think she was probably more consistent even than the other mare (Apaches Angel), but she didn’t grow much over the winter so she won’t be big enough for those (Gold Series) tracks.”
Neither of the fillies who bested Feathery Fame in last year’s Grassroots Championship will compete at Dresden, leaving the winner of $62,741 an opportunity to earn some early points toward another shot at the season finale.
McNair’s fillies join 55 of their peers in pursuit of a total purse of $144,000 and the first of six opportunities to earn points toward a berth in this season’s Grassroots Semifinal. The first Grassroots division goes postward in the first race at 1 pm, with the other seven following in Races 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15.