Trotting filly looks for redemption in Am-Nat

Ultimate Cameron comes into Saturday night’s $131,500 American National 3-Year-Old Filly Trot at Balmoral Park off her lone off-the-board finish this year, with the Illinois event ironically the same race eight years ago that her dam, Cameron Hall, put in her worst performance of that year as the betting favorite.

Both Cameron Hall and Ultimate Cameron hail from the Bob Stewart barn, and the Kentucky-based conditioner says to not read too much into the latter’s eighth-place finish in her last outing in the $221,500 Moni Maker Aug. 22 at The Red Mile. In that race, driver Trevor Ritchie got away from the gate second with Ultimate Cameron, but never found room off the pylons the rest of the way and finished full of trot in eighth, just 4 ¼ lengths behind the winner.

“The trip just didn’t work out,” Stewart said of Ultimate Cameron’s effort in the Moni Maker. “She really never had a chance to race the entire time.”

Ultimate Cameron brings a career slate of 16-4-3 into the American National, with her biggest victory coming in June in the $540,290 Elegantimage final at Mohawk where she posted a career-best 1:53.3 effort. She also finished second in the $750,000 Hambletonian Oaks in early August at the Meadowlands.

“She drew the rail for the American National, and trained good Tuesday, so I think she will race very well,” said Stewart of the daughter of Yankee Glide owned by Diamond Creek Farm of Paris, Ky.

One change for the American National is that Trace Tetrick has gotten the driving call from Stewart as the conditioner turns back to the same reinsman who directed a 2-year-old Ultimate Cameron to a second-place finish in last year's $100,000 American National. Stewart noted the irony in Ultimate Cameron’s chance to atone for Cameron Hall’s disappointment

“She made a break in the elimination and still won, and then she came back and raced terrible in the final,” Stewart remembered of Cameron Hall. “And that was really her only bad race. We gave her 45 days off and took it easy with her, then she came back and swept the card-she won the Kentucky Filly Futurity, the Breeders Crown and the Matron.”

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