Flamboro Downs fans were treated to Gold Series action for both the two-year-old trotting colts and pacing colts on Sunday (Oct. 3) and, in spite of thick fog and heavy rain, the track records for both divisions had been rewritten by the night’s end.

Erinwood Yves lowered the two-year-old pacing colt track record with a gate-to-wire effort from post four that saw him sail under the wire 3-1/4 lengths the best in 1:53.1. Favourite Magical Arthur finished second and Betterhavemymoney rounded out the top three.

The mile, delivered over a rain-soaked surface that had been downgraded by one second to "good," lowered the previous track record of 1:53.3 set by Warrawee Needy in 2011.

“He’s an exceptional horse and he was on point tonight. Going into this race I felt pretty confident,” said trainer Gabriella Sasso of Erinwood Yves, who had not started since the August 14 Gold event. “We did skip the last Gold [September 4]. He didn’t come out of his last race 100 per cent, and we just wanted to have him as good as we could for this last Gold and the Super Final. We know that he’s excellent on a half, so we just backed him off, gave him a little paddock time, and had him ready for tonight.”

Louis-Philippe Roy piloted Erinwood Yves to his first Ontario Sires Stakes victory for Sasso and her husband Jeff Courchesne of Cambridge, Ont., and their co-owners Martwest Racing Stable and Erinwood Equine Inc. of Rockwood, Ont., who also bred the son of State Treasurer and Zayra Bayama.

“We’re just tickled with him. Erinwood pulled him out of the womb and I think it’s been a pretty exciting ride for them,” said Sasso, who was smitten with Erinwood Yves when she helped breeders Fiona Green and Andrew Carss with their 2020 yearling sale preparations and offered to go halves with them on the colt. “There was something about him, he was a little bit small, his pedigree was not super desirable, it was an unproven mare, but there was just something about him that spoke to me and I kind of thought he would be in our price range, so we made the deal and it worked out really, really well.”