Speed stamps Quiet Giant as dangerous in Cheap Seats

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Quiet Giant may never have a better chance to win a stakes race than she will have on Sunday at Aqueduct.

Quiet Giant, a daughter of Giant’s Causeway and a half-sister to 2005 Horse of the Year Saint Liam, looks like the potential main speed in Sunday’s $60,000 Cheap Seats Stakes at a mile over Aqueduct’s inner track. She will face five rivals in the two-turn, one-mile race.

“This should be right her up alley, a two-turn mile and the filly’s been training well,” said Todd Pletcher, who trains Quiet Giant for owner/breeder Edward P. Evans.

After finishing last in her debut which was on turf, Quiet Giant won a maiden race at Parx Racing and a first-level allowance race at a mile and 70 yards at Delaware Park. She stepped up into stakes company in the Belle Cherie Stakes at Belmont, where she finished fifth, beaten two lengths in the one-turn mile race. She came back 17 days later, on Oct. 20, and finished second in the Pollys Jet Stakes over a wet-fast track at Delaware Park.

There is a forecast for significant rain on Sunday in New York.

“She gives me the impression she’ll handle a wet surface,” Pletcher said. “I wouldn’t say the surface bothered her [at Delaware]. She was just second best on the day.”

John Velazquez rides Quiet Giant from post 5.

Indian Burn is a stakes winner over the inner track, having taking the Ruthless Stakes going six furlongs in January. She is winless in her last seven starts, but did finish second in a second-level allowance race going a one-turn mile over Aqueduct’s main track.

Trainer John Hertler is confident his filly will handle the two turns on Sunday.

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Hertler said. “She acts like she’ll stretch out around two turns. I’m more confident in the two turns than I am about a wet track.”

Hatheer has recorded both of her career wins on turf, and is trying the dirt for the first time since she finished second in the three-horse Lake Placid, which was rained off the turf. Potosina goes turf-to-dirt for Maryland-based trainer Mark Shuman. The last time Potosina went turf-to-dirt, she won a second-level allowance race at Parx.