Two champs pursuing three-peats

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Canadian champions Mobil and One for Rose both look for an unprecedented three-peat on Sunday at Woodbine. Mobil goes for this third straight score in the Halton, and One for Rose her third consecutive Algoma Stakes.

The Halton and Algoma are part of a card that features six $125,000 stakes restricted to graduates of local yearling sales. The Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society, which runs the sale, will offer a $10,000 credit to be used at the sale for the trainer of each sales stakes winner, provided that the horse was never claimed.

Mobil scored easy decisions over Lenny the Lender to win the last two editions of the Halton, a 1 1/8-mile race on turf. Last year's champion older runner, Mobil is winless in four starts this year, but has finished second in three graded stakes at the meeting, the Vigil on dirt and the King Edward and Chinese Cultural Centre on turf. He won his maiden at 2 in the 2002 Simcoe, another yearling sale stakes.

Trainer Mike Keogh entered Mobil in both the Halton and the Elgin, a 1 1/16-mile dirt race Sunday. Keogh said he is planning to run Mobil in the Halton.

"I prefer to run him on the grass," Keogh said. "He's grabbed [his quarter] coming out of the gate three times before, and it's always been on the dirt."

One for Rose, the champion older filly or mare the past two years, is coming off a hard-fought victory over males in the Grade 3 Seagram Cup Stakes. She won the Ontario Matron Handicap in her second start of the year, but finished fifth when trainer Sid Attard shipped her to Monmouth for the Grade 2 Molly Pitcher BC Handicap on July 9.

Attard said One for Rose disliked the muddy track in the Molly Pitcher.

"It was a funny type of mud there," Attard said. "The track was fast by the seventh race, but then it rained for 20 minutes. If it was a fast track, I think she would have gotten third money."

One for Rose won the 2003 Algoma by 9 1/2 lengths, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 105. She won last year's renewal of the Algoma, a 1 1/16-mile race, with a 100 Beyer.

Forever Grand has won the last two runnings of the six-furlong Kenora, but is heading into Sunday's renewal in poor form. He won the 2002 Elgin as a 3-year-old.