The O'Brien Award-winning trotter Logan Park debuted for trainer Kyle Fellows in the Woodbine Mohawk Park qualifying session on Monday morning in mid-April.
Reunited with regular reinsman Doug McNair for his first mile of documented racing in his six-year campaign, Logan Park set fractions of :29.3, :59.2, and 1:28.2 before winning the fast track in 1:55.1, crossing in front of four other competitors. In her second qualification of the season, the mare HP Mama B, trained by Ben Baillargeon and riding for Louis-Philippe Roy, stayed on Logan Park's back for the full mile and finished 1-1/2 lengths behind. Another Fellows trainee, Esplosione (Jody Jamieson), finished third, just ahead of Musical Ride (Sylvain Filion), the graduate of the Ontario Sires Stakes, by 11 lengths. Regardless of stride, Logan Park and HP Mama B both trotted a final quarter time of :26.4, the fastest of the 11 qualifiers on this 10-degree spring day.
In the previous year, Logan Park won twelve of his twenty starts and $348,970 of his million-dollar bankroll, earning him the title of Older Trotting Horse of the Year. His wins included multiple Free-For-Alls at Mohawk (where he won three times in a Canadian all-age gelding trot record of 1:50.3) and his elimination from the Breeders Crown at Hoosier Park prior to finishing fourth in that $600,000 final. Archangel's Rite of Passage The Outofthepark Stable, breeder Reg Higgs, and Arpad Szabo are the owners of the Park gelding.
During Monday's session, Logan Park's O'Brien Award-winning little sister Willys Home Run (James MacDonald) also made her first appearance of the year. She finished fifth in a 1:59.2 qualifier won by Blake MacIntosh's Champlain Stakes runner-up Cold Snaps (Jamieson), who won by a neck over Connie Chisholm's five-year-old mare Halo Its Heaven (Tyler Jones) and three-quarters of a length ahead of the sophomore-debuting stakes filly Cool Ma Belle (Bob McClure) from the Shawn Steacy barn.
Additionally, McNair led his father Gregg to victory in 1:56 with Osceola, a stakes-winning trotter from multiple Ontario races. After a mistake in a Sunshine Meadows qualifying a week ago, the four-year-old son of Muscle Mass out of Armbro Exquisite led all the way through splits of :30, :59.2, and 1:28 before more than increasing his lead to 8-1/4 lengths into a :28 final frame. Salem Seelster (Roy), trained by Luc Blais, won the Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots and placed second all through his sophomore year. Griff (MacDonald), a two-time Gold winner, made his debut for the Murray Brethour stable and finished third.
With a dominant score of 1:52.1, Bluegrass Stakes winner Command set the quickest mile of the morning and began his four-year campaign for new connections. Before finishing with a: 27 kicker to pull away from OSS graduates Sauble Ace (McClure) and Reign Supreme (Tyler Borth) by 6-1/2 lengths, Filion led the pacing through panels of:27.3, :56.2, and 1:25.1. Once trained by Marie Helene Dupont and owned by Ecurie CSL, the Captaintreacherous-Fable gelding was a juvenile horse at the Brett Pelling stable where he achieved eight career wins from 25 races and over $360,000 in prizes.