Quebec horseman Yves Filion was delighted to have two horses advance to Saturday’s $122,028 Canadian Breeders’ Championship final for three-year-old pacing colts at Mohawk....until the draw.
As luck would have it, Titus Seelster and Victor Bayama, both trained by Stephane Larocque, drew post positions nine and 10 in the field of 10.
“It was the same thing with (pacing mare) Rebeka Bayama, always getting the outside for big races,” said Filion, 67. “I think they’re as good as any on the Ontario Sires Stakes circuit this year, but unless you’ve got three seconds on the field, post position counts for a lot. We’ll need a trip, that’s for sure.”
Filion has won many of the sport’s biggest races, including the North America Cup and Breeders Crown, but never a Canadian Breeders final. “I can’t even remember being in one before,” he said.
On Saturday, he’ll be in the sulky behind lightly-raced Titus Seelster, an Artistic Fella gelding owned by his Bayama Farm and Brian Paquet of Quebec City.
To his outside, son Sylvain will handle Victor Bayama, a Mach Three colt bred and owned by Bayama Farm.
Victor Bayama, who has a mark of 1:50.3 and more than $100,000 in earnings from just 14 career starts, is among the first Ontario-breds produced by Bayama Farm, which switched its breeding focus to Ontario when the industry collapsed in Quebec five years ago. Bayama had been a breeding powerhouse in Quebec for decades.
“I’ve downsized a lot, to about 11 mares from 36 at one time,” said Filion. “I breed about six or seven (a year) now in Ontario.”
He still races a few in Quebec, and may be looking at a lucrative campaign in his home province this summer with three-year-old trotter Viva Bayama, The Muscle Mass filly was a 10-length winner at Hippodrome 3R last weekend in an $8,250 opening leg of the Quebecoises summer series , despite starting from – you guessed it – post 10. That series concludes with a $65,000 final on Sept. 4.
(A Trot Insider Exclusive by Paul Delean)