Streaking Hot Talent in Colleen

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Hot Talent will try to extend her unbeaten streak to four races Sunday at Woodbine, when she meets 11 other 3-year-old fillies in the $145,250 Ontario Colleen Handicap.

Hot Talent, a closer trained by Malcolm Pierce, won her first two starts at a mile, including a first-level allowance. Most recently she was the more fancied half of a favored Stronach Stable entry when she defeated Silver Nithi and Ginger Gold ? the first two winners of the Tiara series - in the third leg of the Canadian Triple Tiara, the Wonder Where Stakes.

Regular rider Todd Kabel believes the best may be yet to come from Hot Talent, a daughter of Alphabet Soup.

"She's still very green, but she's maturing," said Kabel. "I thought I should have drawn off under a hand ride in the lane [in the Wonder Where], but she was switching her leads back and forth, and I had to give her a couple of taps to make her pay attention. She was just playing with me up front, waiting for somebody to come along and challenge her."

After the 1 1/4-mile Wonder Where on Aug. 5, Pierce looked at some races in the United States for Hot Talent, but ultimately he decided to keep her here for the one-mile Colleen, a turf race he won in 2000 with Diadella.

"I'm coming back a little quick for this race," Pierce said, "but it saves me from shipping her out of town. It's worth $175,000 for a Canadian-bred, so it makes sense to keep her at home. Her first two wins came at a mile, so I don't think turning back will be a problem. Kabel just has to push the button a little sooner."

Also in the Colleen lineup are Strait From Texas, Lush Solider, and the Mark Casse-trained entry of Forum Search, Expected Roll, and Jealous Forum.

Strait From Texas, second to Lush Soldier in a division of the 2001 Natalma Stakes, spent the winter with owner James Michael at Tampa Bay Downs, where she didn't take to the main track. She was shipped back here in the spring to trainer Paul Buttigieg, and was a decisive winner of the one-mile allowance prep for the Colleen, in which she upset Lush Soldier.

"A flat mile is her best distance," Buttigieg pointed out. "She's come around slowly this year, but she's doing good now. I worked her five-eighths in 1:04 the other day. She's not much of a work horse, when she goes by herself."

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