Trainer ANGUS BUNTAIN has been interviewed many times for big races or stakes races. In fact, he has had starters in the Queen’s Plate, the biggest Canadian race of them all.
But it was only October 20 when he got his first trip to the stakes winner’s circle when Pier 1 Stables’ UNBRIDLED WEATHER battled it out to win the $100,500 Frost King Stakes. It was fitting that this plucky juvenile making his fourth start in just 27 days won a race named after one of the most gritty and famous Canadian Thoroughbreds of all time.
Unbridled Weather was winning for the first time in his career in the Frost King. His owner, Pier 1 Stables, was winning its first Woodbine stakes race and Unbridled Weather’s sire PRIME ATTRACTION was siring his first winner and stakes winner.
Ridden by the red-hot young man Fraser Aebly, Unbridled Weather showed speed to track longshot My Boy Bruce through 23.07 and a quicker 45.39. Unbridled Weather secured a short lead but had closers Awesome Rainbow and Keoka, the race favourite, chasing. Awesome Rainbow, by Old Forester, got close but eventually could not pass the Buntain-trained bay. The time of 1:16.58 was good for a 71 Beyer Speed Figure.
Second in his debut and in the Bull Page Stakes on turf, Unbridled Weather was coming off a five furlong turf stake, the Algonquin, against open company. He was outrun in a fifth-place finish.
Buntain said the gelding could now be stretched out to 1 1/8 miles for the Coronation Futurity.
Unbridled Weather, a $9,000 purchase at last year’s CTHS yearling sale at Woodbine, is from the first crop of Ontario sire PRIME ATTRACTION, a son of Unbridled’s Song. Prime Attraction won the Grade 3 Native Diver Stakes at Del Mar in 2017 and was second in the Pacific Classic, among other races. He is now the leading first crop sire in Canada.
Pier 1 Stables has raced horses for about seven years, according to Equibase. Most of its starters have been at Fort Erie where the stable won the Bob Summers Memorial Stakes with Strategic Vision two years ago.
More from Canadian Thoroughbred:
