ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The pickings are slim on Thursday’s eight-race card at Woodbine. The featured second race, an allowance prep for the Aug. 28 Ontario Colleen Stakes, drew just five 3-year-old fillies, who will meet over seven furlongs on the turf, for a purse of $91,100.
Redverse should be favored. She was a non- threatening sixth in her May 23 season opener on Polytrack in the La Lorgnette Stakes.
Redverse showed that she could handle the grass more than adequately June 20, when she beat stakes winner Soul of Nataka while capturing a second-level optional claimer over nine furlongs. She earned a respectable 84 Beyer Speed Figure that day.
Most recently on July 14, Redverse hooked a quality field going 1 1/16 miles on grass. She raced wide throughout that third-level optional claimer en route to a fifth-place finish behind stakes winners Impossible Time and Sugar Bay.
Redverse has the same connections as 2006 Queen’s Plate winner Edenwold – jockey Emile Ramsammy, trainer Josie Carroll, and owners Jim and Alice Sapara.
There is a dearth of speed in the race, and First With Class or Jenny’s So Great could inherit the roll of pacemaker.
First With Class rallied very wide from the back of the pack to win her debut in a five-furlong maiden special April 4. She went on to win her second start at the first allowance condition going seven-eighths May 29.
First With Class is a half-sister to the graded turf stakes winner Silver Ticket, so it was a logical move for trainer Mark Frostad to move her to the grass for a seven-furlong optional claiming race on June 23. After pressing a slow pace then, she faded to end up fourth.
First With Class has worked three times leading up to this engagement, including a five-furlong breeze in 1:00.80 over the turf training course July 18. Leading rider Eurico Da Silva retains the mount.
Jenny’s So Great placed in three stakes on Polytrack last year at 2, but she has been a disappointment this year. She was seventh behind some salty opposition in her only turf try, in a one-mile allowance June 25, and is coming off a victory over $40,000 conditioned claimers.
Miss Lola finished two lengths back in fifth in her next-to-last outing on the grass in the Alywow Stakes.
Rounding out the field is Officer’s Dream, who wound up ninth in the Alywow.
