Day 127 of the 2024 Woodbine meeting on December 15 has 13 races on the schedule including the $100,000 Steady Growth Stakes for three-year-olds and upward, Ontario-sired horses at 1 1/16 miles.
The Steady Growth, named for the 1979 Queen’s Plate winner and Champion three-year-old colt, is race 11. Nine horses are entered, including last year’s winner SECRET RESERVE.
Owned by Carlo d’Amato and Stacy Van Camp and trained by Mike Mattine, Secret Reserve has not won since his Steady Growth score last Dec. 10, but he has kept very good company such as Patches O’Houlihan and Filo di Arianna, both probable champions this year. When Secret Reserve stretched out to the route distance for last year’s edition, it was only the third time he had done so and he won by a head. This year he was third in the Grade 2 King Edward Stakes on the grass in August.
The son of Giant Gizmo (who has sired three of the last seven Steady Growth winners) has been working quickly and he has a new rider on Sunday in Eswan Flores.
Mattine has 19 wins this year, just three shy of his career-best mark.
Secret Reserve’s main competition will be RON’S GIZMO – yes, another by Giant Gizmo – and a win by this large gelding would put a nice big cherry on top of what could be a career season for trainer Ron Sadler.
Sadler, who began training in the mid-1980s, has sent out 12 winners this year, one shy of his second-best total of 13, and collected purses of over $350,000, his second-highest total. Ron’s Gizmo, owned by Linda Theil and Harri Hosein, has won seven races from 30 starts and is a seven-year-old who was third to Secret Reserve in this race last year. The gelding came close to his first stakes win in September when he missed by a head in the Grade 3 Durham Cup Stakes to Dresden Row.
“This year has been wonderful,” said Sadler, who has a career-best 21 percent win rate in 2024. “The horses have all performed well. Everything just seemed to flow, and the racing gods seemed to be on my side.”
Sadler has horses in the last three races on the last day of racing, seeking the natural hat-trick.
The Steady Growth is one of the younger stakes races on the Woodbine calendar, as it was first run in 1997 and won by champion Deputy Inxs.
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