Plate Trial just another step for My Boy Prince
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ETOBICOKE, Ontario – My Boy Prince will continue his march toward the $1 million King’s Plate on Saturday’s Woodbine Oaks undercard in the $150,000 Plate Trial Stakes.
My Boy Prince put together a spectacular juvenile campaign that earned him Canadian champion male 2-year-old honors. He capped his championship season with a commendable third in the one-mile Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita.
My Boy Prince is coming off back-to-back seven-furlong stakes scores, with big Beyer Speed Figures of 97 and 88. The 1 1/8-mile Plate Trial will be his first two-turn Tapeta race, and trainer Mark Casse is optimistic that the son of Cairo Prince will run on.
“There’s always a question mark, and hopefully we’ll get some answers on Saturday,” Casse said. “He’s so talented. As long as he settles, I think he’ll go long. You just don’t know until you try. One thing that makes him so unique is that he just does what he has to do. And then in the afternoons, boy, when you ask him to go, he takes off. He’s definitely an afternoon horse, which is nice. I’m hoping that attitude will serve him well and help get him a mile and an eighth.”
Sahin Civaci will ride My Boy Prince for Gary Barber, who co-owns the 2023 King’s Plate victor and Plate Trial winner Paramount Prince.
Piper’s Factor could be the main threat if the erratic colt fires his best shot for new rider Patrick Husbands. Trained by Katerina Vassilieva for Chiefswood Stables, Piper’s Factor beat older allowance opponents two back with an 85 Beyer before coming up empty when favored in the Grade 3 Marine, a subpar showing left Chiefswood general manager Robert Landry surprised.
“For whatever reason, he ran poorly,” Landry said. “He was training too good to run that way. Hopefully, it was just a bad day. Patrick worked him the other day and he worked well. It was just to get a feel for him, and he was happy with the work.”
No More Options, Jokestar, Friendly Ghost, Rafaroo, and Beautiful Sky round out the field. The maiden Beautiful Sky was supplemented to both the Trial and Oaks, in which she’s the lone also-eligible.
The versatile No More Options has yet to run a bad race in eight starts for trainer Zeljko Krcmar. He took the 6 1/2-furlong Frost King Stakes in October before ending up third in the 1 1/8-mile Coronation Futurity in November.
No More Options won his second start of the season in an Ontario-sired allowance on the inner turf, over which he won his maiden. He raced wide throughout while closing for third most recently in the Queenston, which My Boy Prince won impressively. Runner-up Essex Serpent returned to capture the Marine in a breakout performance.
Edgard Zayas inherits the mount on No More Options from Kazushi Kimura, who has left Woodbine to ride the Del Mar summer meet.
Emma-Jayne Wilson takes over from Kimura on Jokestar, who was competitive in each of his last two outings against older allowance opponents for trainer Kevin Attard.
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