My Boy Prince Leads Rescheduled King’s Plate Aug. 23

Six days after heavy rain washed out the King’s Plate Stakes at Woodbine Aug. 17, the Thoroughbreds competing and racegoers able to attend will not have to deal with inclement weather when the rescheduled race is staged Aug. 23.

Partly cloudy skies and pleasant temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70s are forecast for Friday, though on-track attendance and handle are likely to be lower on a weekday. Woodbine is offering free admission and seating due to the scale of the onsite activities not being as extensive as was planned for this past Saturday. The track said that those who purchased grandstand seats and tickets to the Hats And Horseshoes Party on the original King’s Plate date will receive a refund through Ticketmaster. 

Four other stakes that had been scheduled on King’s Plate Day also will be run Friday afternoon.

Hall of Fame trainer Mark Casse and Sovereign Award-winning owner Gary Barber have together won the King’s Plate three times, striking with the fillies Lexie Lou  and Wonder Gadot  in 2014 and 2018, respectively, and last year with a gelding, Paramount Prince , who Barber owns with Michael Langlois.

On Friday, they will be favored to win a fourth Plate with My Boy Prince , the champion 2-year-old male in Canada last year whose form in 2024 at 3 has also been top-notch. He comes off three straight stakes wins.

Those victories, like the King’s Plate, were against restricted Canadian-bred 3-year-old competition—though for far less money and prestige. The King’s Plate, a 1 1/4-mile race on Tapeta, is worth CA$1 million and is sometimes compared to being the Canadian equivalent of the Kentucky Derby (G1). The first leg of the Canadian Triple Crown, it is the oldest continuously run stakes race in North America and will have its 165th running Friday.

That Canadian Triple Crown continues with the Sept. 10 Prince of Wales Stakes at 1 3/16 miles on dirt at Fort Erie and the Sept. 29 Breeders’ Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf at Woodbine. The dates of those other legs were not changed after the King’s Plate postponement.

The King’s Plate, named in honor of the current British monarch—it was known as the Queen’s Plate when Lexie Lou and Wonder Gadot were successful—drew a field of 13, with Casse also training two others in the lineup. Those two, Essex Serpent  and Midnight Mascot , ran 1-3, respectively, in the Marine Stakes (G3) for Manfred and Penny Conrad, owners of both.

Typically a front-runner, My Boy Prince readied for the Plate in one of the other major preps, the Plate Trial Stakes, overcoming rearing at the break to score from a couple of lengths off the pace. Though the Cairo Prince   colt was successful, his margin of victory was just 1 1/4 lengths over the maiden Rafaroo , a Plate longshot, and his winning 1 1/8-mile time of 1:51.12 was modest.

As for Essex Serpent, a son of Honor Code , and Midnight Mascot, an Army Mule   colt, they will be ridden by three-time Plate winner Patrick Husbands and Kazushi Kimura, respectively.

The Marine’s strength was validated when Cameo Performance , the runner-up, returned to win the $250,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Nashville Derby at Ellis Park.

A filly will test male rivals in the King’s Plate—Siena Farm and WinStar Farm’s Woodbine Oaks runner-up Caitlinhergrtness . She will take on the boys, doing so for trainer Kevin Attard, who saddled the last filly to win the Plate when Moira  became the 38th filly to win the race in 2022. 

An Omaha Beach   filly, Caitlinhergrtness won an allowance optional claiming race on turf two weeks before her runner-up finish in the Woodbine Oaks. She carries 121 pounds, 5 pounds less than her male counterparts.

She is one of four starters for Attard, the others being Bedard , Jokestar , and Pierre .