ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Following Yorkton’s second consecutive victory in the Grade 3 Bold Venture Stakes on Sept. 14, trainer Stu Simon said he would point the 5-year-old son of Speighstown to the Grade 2, $250,000 Nearctic Stakes over six furlongs on turf on Oct. 12. Simon said he also was looking toward the Grade 2, $175,000 Kennedy Road Stakes on Nov. 23 to close Yorkton’s 2019 campaign. Yorkton ran in both races last season, finishing second in the Nearctic before running fourth in the Kennedy Road. The Bold Venture marked Yorkton’s first win of the season and followed a 10-week layoff. Simon had been high on how Yorkton was training over the winter, but Yorkton didn’t find his best form during the spring. He finished eighth in his seasonal debut in the Grade 3 Jacques Cartier Stakes on May 4 and followed that up with a fourth-place finish in the Grade 2 Connaught Cup and a sixth-place finish in the Grade 1 Highlander Stakes. “He just had things go wrong this spring,” Simon said. “He probably needed his first race a little more than I thought. He had missed a work going up to that race because of weather in Kentucky and he was probably a work away. The two starts after that, he hooked very tough fields. He had things go wrong. He grabbed a quarter badly. He had a crack in his foot, so we had to address that and give it time and got it straightened around. He ran a big race and came back well.” Meanwhile, another one of Simon’s top sprinters, Summer Sunday, returned to the work tab for the first time since having her seven-race Woodbine win streak snapped in the Grade 3 Seaway Stakes on Aug. 25. She breezed four furlongs in 47.80 seconds on the main track on Sept. 20. Simon said he would point Summer Sunday toward the Grade 3, $125,000 Ontario Fashion Stakes over six furlongs on Tapeta on Oct. 12. Had everything gone well in the Seaway, Simon was hoping to run Summer Sunday back in the Grade 2, $400,000 Presque Isle Downs Masters Stakes on Sept. 16. Instead, Simon opted to back off on Summer Sunday following her second-place finish in the Seaway and kept her in light training at Woodbine. “It was a steady hard run, and I felt she needed a bit of a freshening,” he said. Despite having her win streak come to an end, Simon said he was still happy with Summer Sunday’s effort in the Seaway. He added that he felt the track condition wasn’t to Summer Sunday’s liking. “She still gutted it out,” he said. “The track came up really funny that day. It was two or three seconds slow. I don’t think she really liked it. It put a stress on her, but she fought through it.” Simon said he also was looking to run Summer Sunday in the Grade 2, $175,000 Bessarabian Stakes over seven furlongs on Tapeta on Nov. 24 to close her Woodbine campaign.