GLOUCESTER, ON — Ontario Sires Stakes action returns to Rideau Carleton Raceway on Friday evening with three Trillium Series divisions for the two-year-old trotting fillies.
The Trillium Series is open to both Ontario-sired and Ontario-owned fillies, and owner Eric Baker sends one filly from each category to Rideau Carleton on Friday. Lady Stormont is a daughter of Pine Chip, who stood in Kentucky before being exported to Europe, and Stormont Ruby is a daughter of top Ontario trotting sire Balanced Image.
Lady Stormont kicked off her freshman campaign with a victory at Sudbury Downs in the first Trillium event on June 29, but went off stride in the July 20 contest at Hanover Raceway and struggled through the remainder of the summer with illness. The sister to $875,463 winner Lord Stormont and $318,483 winner Earl Of Stormont seems to have regained some of that early season form in her last two starts and heads into her sixth race off a 2:04 victory at Flamboro Downs on Oct. 13. “She’s never been quite up to where we hoped she would be, but she’s had some problems, she had one illness after another,” says Baker. “We think she’s on the mend now, but it takes a while for them to recover after they get down like that.”
Norm Jones of Rockwood trains and drives Lady Stormont and the duo will start from Post 3 in Race 6 on Friday. If the filly comes up with a big effort she may be heading south of the border for a few late season stakes engagements, otherwise Baker says they will wrap up her two-year-old campaign and hope for better things at three.
“She is staked to a lot of things, so she could race a lot more, but if she doesn’t shape up we’ll shut her down here soon,” says the owner of Stormont Meadows in Long Sault. “We’ll see how she races at Rideau.”
While Baker had high expectations for Lady Stormont in the early season, he never anticipated that the gangly Stormont Ruby would take the world by storm as a two-year-old. The long legged filly has made seven of her eight starts at Rideau Carleton, including her provincial debut in the Gold Series on Aug. 21 and 28, and heads into Friday’s event off a pair of wins on Sept. 20 and Oct. 4.
“She is a really, really big filly and so we have been racing her kind of careful,” says the owner-breeder. “Hopefully at three she will better than she is at two.”
Napanee resident Kevin Benn trains Stormont Ruby and regular driver Howard Portelance will steer the filly from Post 3 in the tenth race on Friday. Baker hopes the inside post will allow Portelance to carve out the come-from-behind trip the big filly seems to require at this stage in her career.
“She is getting handier. When we first started racing her she was kind of clumsy, but she’s much better now,” he adds. “We’ve got our fingers crossed that at three she’ll be a nice filly.”
Stormont Ruby’s season will also come to a close in the coming weeks as Benn and Baker turn their attention to next season.
Rideau Carleton features the two-year-old trotting fillies in Races 6, 8 and 10 on their 6:30 pm program Friday. While it is the last Trillium Series contest on the freshman fillies’ schedule, the Gold Series fillies make one last stop at Mohawk Racetrack on Oct. 31 and Nov. 7 and the top 16 point earners from the Grassroots are heading to Georgian Downs for Semifinal action Nov. 2 and the Grassroots Championship Nov. 9.
Ontario Sires Stakes excitement returns to Rideau Carleton Raceway on Oct. 31 when the three-year-old trotting fillies make their way to the nation’s capital for their last Gold Series Eliminations.