REXDALE, ON — For the last four months the top trotters and pacers in Ontario have been working toward a single goal — a berth in the season ending Super Final. On Saturday night the top 10 point earners from each division will realise their dream at Woodbine Racetrack, where they will battle for a share of the $2.4 million Ontario Sires Stakes purse.

“Any one of those two-year-olds could jump up and win on any given night,” says trainer John Kopas about the freshman pacing filly field. “They’re all very talented horses.”

Kopas will harness two-time Gold Final winner Style in the second $300,000 Super Final on Saturday and the Campbellville resident hopes the filly is ready to bounce back to the form that saw her post seven wins and two seconds in nine starts through the months of August and September. Style’s hot streak ended when she finished sixth in the Three Diamonds elimination at Woodbine on Oct. 14 and came up sick following the race.

“She was sick in the Three Diamonds,” says Kopas, who conditions the filly for breeder Glengate Farms of Campbellville and George Hempt of Camp Hill, PA. “It took her a good 10 days to two weeks to really get over her problem. She wasn’t sick enough that we couldn’t jog her, but we didn’t train her at all for about 10 days.”

After the Camluck daughter was able to resume her regular training schedule, Kopas put her in to qualify at Mohawk Racetrack and Style was an effortless winner in 1:57 on Nov. 4.

“She qualified very nicely,” notes the veteran horseman. “We trained her this morning (Tuesday), she trained very well, and we’re going to go into the race off that.”

Style and regular reinsman Tony Kerwood will start from Post 3 in the freshman pacing filly season finale and Kopas expects some of their toughest competition to come from division leader To Helen Back, who will line up at Post 1 in the fourth race.

“To Helen Back, I thought, raced very well down there (Windsor) the other night (Nov. 5). She had to come from a long way out of it,” explains Kopas. “If she races back to that she’ll be a formidable foe.”

To Helen Back finished third behind Camaronni N Cheese in the Nov. 5 Gold Final at Windsor Raceway. Ironically, the talent in the two-year-old pacing filly division is so deep that Camaronni N Cheese will not start in the Super Final unless one of the other fillies comes up sick — she failed to make the top 10 by 11 points and is the first also eligible Saturday.

Pure Ivory captured the two-year-old trotting filly Gold Final at Windsor Raceway on Nov. 5 and headlines the Super Final field at Woodbine on Saturday, making a bid for her third straight victory, and her ninth of the season, from Post 7 in the third race.

“The seven hole is not too bad. It’s better than the 10,” says driver Steve Condren of Milton, who shares ownership on the filly with breeder Harry Rutherford of Mount Pleasant, Jerry Vanboekel of Bright and Christina Maxwell of Ayr. “She can leave, she can come from the middle or she can come from behind. We’ll see how it sets up.”

The Windsor victory was Pure Ivory’s first Gold Final triumph, but the Striking Sahbra daughter has earned more than her share of stakes hardware this season. She made her debut with a victory at the Grassroots level on July 12 and then reeled off wins in the Trillium Series, a division of the Robert Stewart Stakes and a Gold Elimination. Second in the Aug. 29 Gold Final at Mohawk Racetrack from Post 9, she bounced back to win a division of the Champlain Stakes and an elimination of the Oakville Stakes.

Breaks in the Oakville Final and a Sept. 25 Gold Elimination at Flamboro Downs convinced trainer Brad Maxwell to give the filly a well deserved rest and she returned to Gold Series competition in top form, scoring wins in her elimination and the final at Windsor.

“She looks just as good now as she did at the beginning of the year, which is a good sign,” notes Condren. “She’s grown a little and rounded up good.”

The veteran reinsman, who has guided the winners of almost $93 million in his career, expects three time Gold Final winner Birminghim to offer up the biggest threat to Pure Ivory’s burgeoning win streak on Saturday. The division leader will start from Post 5.

The trotting fillies will battle in Race 3 on Woodbine Racetrack’s Saturday evening program, with the other seven Super Finals featured in Races 4 through 10. The first race rolls in behind the starting gate at 7:40 pm.

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