By Bill Finley
On paper, it looks like 8-5 morning line favorite Paramount Prince (Society's Chairman) is the horse to beat in Tuesday's $400,000 Prince of Wales S. at Fort Erie, the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown. He's perfect around two turns and is coming off a front-running victory in the first leg of the series, the King's Plate. And once again, there doesn't appear to be another horse in the field who can keep this front-runner honest early.
But this race always comes with a handicapping conundrum. How do you pick the winner in a dirt race when not one of the 11 starters has ever won a race over that surface? Most have done their running at Woodbine over the turf courses or the synthetic Tapeta track.
“That's what makes the Canadian Triple Crown so unique,” said Paramount Prince's trainer, Mark Casse. “The first race is on Tapeta, the second is on the dirt and they finish up on the grass in the Breeders' Stakes. We had him all winter at our training center in Ocala and he trained extremely well over the dirt there. I'd be kind of shocked if he didn't handle the dirt. But you never know.”
According to the figures provided by Thoro-Graph, the offspring of Society's Chairman win 16% on the time on dirt and just 13% of the time on synthetic.
Casse has won the Queen's Plate/King's Plate three times, the Prince of Wales four times and the Breeders' Stakes twice. But he has yet to sweep a Canadian Triple Crown, something no horse has done since Wando (Langfuhr) in 2003. The series took a bit of a hit the last two years when the winners of the Queen's Plate skipped the Prince Of Wales. But it looks like the Prince of Wales has rebounded. The 12-horse field is the biggest in 21 years and most of the top Canadian-bred 3-year-old males will be in the race.
Looking to win the Prince of Wales for the fifth time, Casse has every reason to be confident. Paramount Prince, who will be ridden by Patrick Husbands, looks like an improving horse who flourished once sent around two turns. After three straight losses sprinting, he wired the field in the Plate Trial before doing the same in the King's Plate.
“Early on I was very disappointed in him,” Casse said. “This winter I kept saying this is a good horse. The first time I ran him I told (owner) Gary (Barber) that I didn't think he'd get beat. But he disappointed me. He trained great coming into his second race and didn't win either. I think he wants to you to grab him and get into a rhythm. He doesn't do that sprinting.”
Casse has also entered Stayhonor Goodside (Honor Code), who is 10-1 in the morning line and was kept out of the King's Plate.
“I kind of pointed that horse to this race because I thought he has a good dirt pedigree,” Casse said. “But we're all guessing.”
Trainer Michael DePaulo will send out a pair in 4-1 second choice Stanley House (Army Mule) and Cook Kiss (Kantharos). Cook Kiss is one of only two horses in the field that has started on the dirt. He finished second in a dirt allowance in July at Gulfstream. Stanley House was third in the King's Plate, beaten three lengths, and never threatened the winner. Both horses will wear blinkers for the first time.
“We're hoping somebody goes after Paramount Prince at some point. But you never know,” DePaulo said. “Patrick is a cagey rider and might not go to the lead. The Society's Chairmans in general haven't been real big dirt horses that I've seen. But you never know. I put the blinkers on Stanley because he's been a little further than I'd like in most of his races. The other horse, Cook Kiss, he sometimes looks like he's goofing around. I thought blinkers might help. You look at his Ragozin numbers and they're way better than his Beyer numbers because he's always so wide. He ran a mile and three eighths in the Plate.”
Kaukokaipuu (Mr Speaker) went off at 8-1 in the King's Plate only to lose by 37 1/4 lengths. Trainer Ted Holder is willing to try again.
“We haven't missed a beat,” Holder said. “We unfortunately got outdistanced so we ended up on the Alcohol and Gaming Commission's outdistanced vet's list. So, I worked with him, a very slow maintenance work for him to get him off the list. We went over him with the vets to make sure everything was in order and we got the green light, so we are proceeding.”
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