Closing day at Woodbine, December 14, has 12 races including the 28th Steady Growth Stakes, an Ontario-sired event at 1 1/16 miles for three-year-olds and upward.
Woodbine does a super job of remembering super horses from the past by naming stakes races after them. STEADY GROWTH was Kinghaven Farms’ first Queen’s Plate winner and he passed on his tall and gangly build to his offspring. He was a top sire in Ontario with more than a dozen stakes winners including champion and millionaire Steady Power.
This year’s field for the Steady Growth (race 10 on Sunday) has nine tough guys entered and quite a few horses who want to be on the early lead. One of the most noticeable trends in recent years of Steady Growth winners is that four of the last eight winners were sired by GIANT GIZMO. Giant Gizmo led all Canadian sires for three years before he was sold to Panama, where he stands alongside several other North American stallions.
Giant Gizmo’s sons Where’s the Widget (2016), Keen Gizmo (2017), Secret Reserve (2023) and the late Ron’s Gizmo (2024) won the Steady Growth and this year, it appears to be LAC MACAZA‘s turn. A six-year-old by Giant Gizmo, Lac Macaza was second in the 2022 Steady Growth. Owned by Goldie Stables and Discovery Racing and trained by Julia Carey, Lac Macaza has been a trusty friend to bettors and his connections through a career that has seen him win seven races and over $406,000. Other than an odd set of two races this summer when he was surprisingly claimed for $50,000 by A. Bianco Holding Limited, Lac Macaza has been in the Carey barn.
The gelding seeks his first win since he took the Niagara Stakes last fall. He is 4-3-2 in 18 races at the 1 1/16 mile distance on Tapeta and has a ton of pace to run at on Sunday. The race’s favourite figures to be AWESOME BOURBON, a Kentucky-bred by Not Bourbon, who paired up two huge efforts on the inner turf 15 days apart in September, but has never tried a route race on the main track.
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