After the early leavers settled in line, Woodbine Racetrack's season-leading driver Doug McNair made the winning move with Bernadette on the backstretch in Friday night's featured $30,000 Fillies & Mares Preferred Pace.
Bernadette, an Ontario Sires Stakes graduate now trained by Ron Adams, earned her first victory against Preferred company.
Following a contested :26.2 opening quarter, Bernadette rushed to command out of an early five-hole and reached the half in :56.4. She then forged on to three-quarters in 1:24.2 and remained clear of her competition down the stretch to score the 1:52 victory by one and a half lengths. P L Hurricane (Rick Zeron) beat out Victoria Semalu (James MacDonald), Exhilarated (Jonathan Drury) and favourite Waasmula (Trevor Henry) in the race for place.
Bernadette paid $7.70 to win as the 5-2 third choice in the field of eight.
Adams and David Kryway share ownership of the four-year-old Big Jim-Matilda mare, who has earned half of her eight career wins this year. Tonight's victory boosted her annual income to $63,350, which places her amongst the top three money-earners in Canada for 2017.
Bernadette was the third winner on Friday's 10-race card driven by McNair, who assisted Richard Moreau in achieving a training triple. The duo teamed up for one of their wins with trotter Adversity ($3.70) in the sixth race. The Moreau stable also picked up victories with Wanda Bayama ($5.60) and Exemplar ($3.70), both driven by another three-time Friday winner, Sylvain Filion.
Following an incident in Friday's third race in which horses appeared to get jammed up down the backstretch and into the final turn, driver Randy Waples booked off his remaining drives. There were no reported injuries.
Waples was following in the pocket aboard Call It Courage when Jody Jamieson, driving race leader Amazing Control (:27.1, :57.3, 1:26.3), backed down the pace and caused the interference to trailing horses. Favourite Topville Cheetah and Filion closed from off the pace in the stretch to win the race in 1:55.1 while Amazing Control was second-placed-seventh and Call It Courage inherited the runner-up honours.
To view Friday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Friday Results - Woodbine Racetrack.