Miss Temple City has training setback

Miss Temple City, the three-time Grade 1-winning turf mare, had a setback in her training and won’t make a race at the Keeneland spring meet.

Trainer Graham Motion said Sunday that Miss Temple City had gotten loose one morning about three weeks ago at the Palm Meadows training center and as a result had some filling in a leg that required Motion to back off on the mare’s training.

“She literally ran to the farthest part of Palm Meadows and back to the barn,” said Motion, who has Miss Temple City back at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland. “She got a little filling in a leg, nothing more. To run in the Jenny Wiley or against the boys [in the Maker’s Mark 46 Mile], she couldn’t miss a beat. She’s going to breeze toward the end of the week, and if everything goes well, she could make the Distaff Turf Mile and hopefully go back to England.”

The Churchill Distaff Turf Mile is run on the undercard of the May 6 Kentucky Derby. Last year at Royal Ascot, Miss Temple City finished fourth in the Group 2 Duke of Cambridge Stakes. In 2015, Miss Temple City finished fourth in the Group 1 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Miss Temple City has not run since winning the Grade 1 Matriarch at Del Mar on Dec. 4. She had breezed three times at Palm Meadows before getting loose.