The Road To The Queen's Plate

This year marks the 150th running of the Queen's Plate to be held on Sunday June 21st. The Plate, restricted to three year-olds foaled in Canada, is the first leg of the Canadian Triple Crown contested over a distance of a mile and a quarter. In 2008, Not Bourbon and jockey Jono Jones teamed up to win North America's oldest race providing trainer Roger Attfield with his record eighth Plate victory.

Woodbine has launched its annual FREE Queen's Plate Fantasy Challenge, and this year I will be representing Triple Dead Heat as part of the "PRO" division which includes members of the media and various Woodbine personalities. Last year, the contest was won by the lovely Elissa Blowe.
The first opportunity to pick up points is opening day Saturday, April 4th. Enter early for your best chance to win a number of terrific prizes, including a grand prize of a $5,000 HPI deposit or cash voucher.

The contest site is easy to click through and provides a fair bit of background information on the Queen's Plate eligible contenders. Especially helpful is the free past performances provided courtesy of the Daily Racing Form. The difficult part, if you plan on winning the contest, is narrowing down the eligible list to a stable of just ten horses, three trainers and three jockeys. Another key component is nominating a "Stable Star" who will earn your stable bonus points over the course of the competitions' eight eligible races which are worth the following points:



There are numerous issues to consider in picking your team, starting with what to do with the current Plate favourite Square Eddie. Listed at 5-2 in the winter book compiled by Jennifer Morrison, Square Eddie is being pointed at the Kentucky Derby and may not even run in the Plate or the points eligible races. While Square Eddie made my stable, I have decided not to use him as my stable star.

As noted above, trainer Roger Attfield has won the Queen's Plate eight times but of the nine eligible horses to his name, the shortest odds belong to Southdale at 40-1. Southdale has yet to race but the son of Street Cry has been working out in Florida for the upcoming season and will be back in Toronto in the care of trainer Ian Black soon. Many of the horses under Attfield's name are expensive sales purchases that did not race as two year-olds. In a move that may decide my fate in this competition, I've tossed out all of Attfield's horses and used Mark Casse as my Group 1 trainer.

If breeding is your handicapping focus, look no further than trainer Mark Frostad who conditions twelve horses on the eligible list for Sam-Son Farms. Battle At Sea, out of Smart Strike, has impressive breeding and a few works under his belt at the Fair Grounds. However, like many of Frostad's prospects, the colt has yet to race. In fact, it seems many of the Sam-Son horses may be better bred for the turf. Still, it should be strongly noted that Sam-Son Farms have won the Queen's Plate on four occasions. If tossing out Roger Attfield's horses was bold, then the fact that I have also tossed out Frostad's charges may prove to be reckless.

My strategy, if you can call it that, is to focus on horses that raced at Woodbine in 2008 and proved to have a bit of speed and a lot of staying power. My list for the contest is as follows:

Horse/Trainer/Jockey/Odds
*Active Duty - Casse - P. Husbands - 10
Square Eddie - O'Neill - R. Bejerano - 5-2
Utterly Cool - Sid Attard - Dos Ramos - 6
Van Lear Rose (f) - C. Day-Phillips - Sutherland - 12
Parabola - Minshall - Stein - 15
El Brujo - Pierce - Wilson - 12
Keino West - St. Attard - Olguin - 15
Mean Green - Sid Attard - Jones 20
Flip For The Coin - V. Armata - 20
Air Strike - Casse - Husbands - 25

Group 1 Jockey - P. Husbands
Group 2 Jockey - J. Stein
Group 3 Jockey - D. David

Group 1 Trainer - M. Casse
Group 2 Trainer - Steve Attard
Group 3 Trainer - Jimmy Day

I am putting my Queen's Plate Fantasy Challenge fate in the hands of the very successful combo of Husbands and Casse and hope that my stable star, Active Duty, will build upon his early 2009 conditioning at Santa Anita by winning a few of the early Queen's Plate preps in the absence of the talented Square Eddie. Active Duty proved he can win at a distance when he took the Coronation Futurity at 1 1/8 beating another contender, El Brujo, in the process. If all goes well, Active Duty should be a few steps ahead of the well-bred competition that has yet to race.

The best of the bunch could well be the musically monikered miss Van Lear Rose who posted back-to-back 84 speed ratings to end the 2008 campaign. The filly won the G3 Mazarine Stakes with a late rally last October before heading to the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita where she was steadied on the first turn all but ending her chances. Jockey Chantal Sutherland did a great job to take hold of her mount in that race and steered Van Lear Rose to a sixth place finish beaten less than six lengths. This one has the speed to compete with the boys and it would be a storybook trifecta to watch a filly, trained by Catherine Day-Phillips and ridden by Chantal Sutherland make the Plate a girl's night out.

**UPDATE - According to a report on Jennifer Morrison's Thoroughblog, Van Lear Rose was injured in training and will not race in the 2009 season. Please adjust your picks accordingly.**

I invite everyone to join me in the Queen's Plate Fantasy Challenge. Good luck!