Casse saddles Silent Tactic in quest for sixth Grey Stakes score
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ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The Grade 3 Grey Stakes has been won by the likes of the future Canadian Triple Crown winner Wando, along with Sunny’s Halo and Mine That Bird, both of whom went on to win the Kentucky Derby.
Sunday’s renewal of the 1 1/16-mile test for 2-year-olds at Woodbine includes the debut winner Big Time Boss. He has the same connections as last year’s Grey victor, He’s Not Joking, who won the 2024 Sovereign Award for champion male 2-year-old before struggling on the road to this year’s Kentucky Derby. An Ontario-bred trained by Josie Carroll for Di Scola Boys Stable, Big Time Boss could be a prospect for next year’s King’s Plate.
Trainer Miguel Clement’s New York shippers to Woodbine have been deadly this year, and he entered The Big Con and Madagascar. Both won their only race in one-mile maiden special weights on the Tapeta at Presque Isle with relatively low Beyer Speed Figures. Bred in Great Britain, The Big Con is probably the better of the two off his 8 1/2-length tally on Sept. 17. Both are adding Lasix.
Silent Tactic could go favored off his good-looking debut score traveling 1 1/16 miles on Oct. 10, for which he got a 74 Beyer, the highest in the seven-horse Grey field. A $500,000 2-year-old purchase by freshman sire Tacitus, Silent Tactic is trained by Mark Casse, who has won the Grey five times.
“I thought his first race was impressive,” Casse said. “He’s trained well since.”
Mazarine
The other $150,000 stakes going 1 1/16 miles on the card, the Grade 3 Mazarine, attracted six 2-year-old fillies, headed by Cup and Saucer Stakes winner Dixie Law.
Dixie Law made all three of her starts on grass. After landing her debut in a main turf sprint in July, she finished a respectable sixth in the Grade 1 Natalma. She beat a mediocre group of males with ease in the 1 1/16-mile Cup and Saucer on the inner turf on Oct. 5.
Trainer Dale Desruisseaux believes Dixie Law, a daughter of Tiz the Law, should make a smooth transition to racing on the Tapeta.
“Before we were allowed to breeze on the [training] turf, she was breezing exceptionally well [on the Tapeta],” Desruisseaux recalled. “I think she’s a pretty handy horse who can run on anything. You never really know until they run, but she’s always trained well on it.”
Trainer Catherine Day-Phillips will saddle Ontario-bred Katie’s Grace, a debut winner over seven furlongs on Sept. 27.
“She had always trained very well and we thought she would like a distance of ground,” Day-Phillips said. “Based on that, we didn’t want to start her in shorter races, so we waited for the seven-furlong race.”
Carroll runs Bold Time, who graduated second time out in a 1 1/16-mile maiden special while earning a 70 Beyer. Casse, who has won the Mazarine a record 11 times, supplemented the maiden Vanity.
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