This Sunday the Hippodrome 3R will host the richest harness racing program of its 2017 season, as the finals of the Breeders Cup Series for three-year-olds and the Future Stars Series for two-year-olds are set to go postward.
A total of eight championship events for pacers and trotters of both sexes will be raced. The four Breeders Cup finals will each race for $65,000, while the four Future Stars finals will each race for $55,000.
The attractive purses have also drawn some of the sport’s top drivers back to their ‘stomping grounds,’ including last year’s leading driver at H3R, Louis-Philippe Roy, four-time O’Brien Award winner, Sylvain Filion, and Trois-Rivieres native Daniel Dube. All three will be driving in most of the finals.
In fact, some of the races will feature brothers Louis-Philippe and Pierre-Luc Roy and Sylvain and Justin Filion in head-to-head competition. One race will also see father-son, Yves and Sylvain Filion, battle against each other.
The Future Stars final for two-year-old pacing colts will kick off the show in the first race where Stock will start from Post 2 for trainer Dany Fontaine. Stock has won four of his five lifetime starts, the fastest of which was a 1:54.2 victory in his elimination division of the Battle of Waterloo at Grand River Raceway.
The second race is the Breeders Cup final for three-year-old trotting fillies, which will feature Capteur De Reve (Post 1), who will take on Kinnder Dangerous (Post 5). Each has beaten the other in the preliminary rounds.
Two-year-old trotting fillies will battle in their Future Stars Final in Race 3, which is headlined by Precieuse CC (Post 1), who is seeking to make a clean sweep of the series. She has three wins in her four starts.
The Breeders Cup final for three-year-old trotting fillies has been carded the fifth race. Affirmee (Post 7) won two of the three legs leading towards the final for trainer Maxime Velaye.
The sixth race features the Future Stars final for two-year-old trotting colts. The early race favourite is Nobodynojustic (Post 7), who has been a winner in the series, but most recently recorded a win in 2:00 and a second in the Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots Series.
Two-year-old pacing fillies will go at it their Future Stars final (Race 7), where the Guy Corbeil-owned, Maxime Velaye-trained entry of Lit De Rose (Post 2) and Lune Blue (Post 5) head the field. Lit De Rose is the strongest of the two, having won her last two starts, the fastest a 1:59.1 romp at H3R in the last leg of the series.
The fastest of the finals will be the eighth race final of the Breeders Cup for three-year-old pacing colts. Last year’s champion and track record holder, Wildriverbumblebee, will start from Post 7. In his last start, Wildriverbumblebee set a lifetime mark of 1:53, which came in an Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots event at Georgian Downs.
The ninth race is the last of the finals, as the three-year-old pacing fillies will battle it out in their Breeders Cup final. Y S Tallia (Post 4) and Yaris Bayama (Post 3) will renew their rivalry from the preliminary rounds.
Post time is 12:30 p.m.
To view the harness racing entries for Sunday at H3R, click the following link: Sunday Entries – Hippodrome 3R.
(Quebec Jockey Club)