Charles Fipke’s lightly-raced Check Your Soul will get the acid test on Sunday at Woodbine when he goes postward as one of the choices in a field of nine Canadian-bred three-year-olds for the $150,000 Plate Trial Stakes.
It’ll be his biggest challenge to date, when he’ll be facing, amongst others, Bear’s Chill, winner of the recent seven furlong Queenston Stakes; Strike Oil, winner of last year’s Coronation Futurity and Bowman’s Causeway, who last competed in the Florida Derby against Kentucky Derby favourite Dialed In and Preakness winner Shackleford. The winner will certainly become one of the favourites for the Queen’s Plate, Canada’s most famous horse race, on June 26.
The mile and one-eighth Plate Trial, in which all horses carry 126 pounds, goes postward at 4:41 pm and will be televised live on CBC-TV as part of a special one-hour telecast, highlighted by the $500,000 Woodbine Oaks, presented by Budweiser, the premier race in the country for Canadian-bred three-year-old fillies, at 5:16 pm.
Trained by 71-year-old Hall of Famer Roger Attfield, Check Your Soul, an Ontario homebred son of Perfect Soul-Unchecked, comes into the Plate Trial fresh from a two and one-half length score in the mile and one-sixteenth Wando Stakes May 1 at Woodbine, only his third career start and first on Polytrack.
“He’s a green horse,” said Attfield, “He lacks experience. He didn’t really get anything out of the Wando because he was clear on the outside the whole trip. But he won it impressively and has trained on very well since.”
Twenty-five Trial winners have won the Queen’s Plate. For a number of years, the Trial was a barometer for Plate success. But after Alydeed, trained by Attfield, won in 1992, it was 16 years before another Plate Trial winner came back to win the Plate. That horse? Charles Fipke’s Not Bourbon, also trained by Attfield, which tied him with Harry Giddings Jr. for the most Plate wins…eight.
In fact, the last three Trial winners have gone on to Plate success, with Eye of the Leopard in 2009 and Big Red Mike last year capturing the ‘Gallop for the Guineas’ as well.
“This horse is dead fit, so I’m not worried about that aspect (distance) at all,” continued Attfield. “The thing he’s got going against him is his light campaign as far as experience is concerned. He loves the grass, that’s for sure, but he goes well on the Polytrack, too.”
In fact, Check Your Soul’s first two starts came on the turf, one at Gulfstream Park, then another at Keeneland, where he broke his maiden over a mile and one-sixteenth on April 15.
“He’s my only Plate horse. He’s easy to train but he got very warm his last two races in the paddock and post parade, which bothered me a little bit. So we’ve been schooling him a lot. He seems quite happy about it all now. It’s (pre-race sweat) nerves to a degree. He suddenly realized he knew what he was going over there to do. So he sort of got himself up for it a little bit, more than I’d like him too. But it really wasn’t a nervous sweat.
“In the mornings, he’s as cool as a cucumber. Alydeed used to run red-hot. If he wasn’t doing that before a race, he wouldn’t run any good, anyway. Some horses are like that.”
Patrick Husbands, who has one Plate Trial victory to his credit (Pete’s Sake in 2000), will once again be aboard Check Your Soul.
$150,000 Plate Trial Stakes, One Mile and One Eighth, Sunday, June 5 Post Time 4:41 pm
Post Position/Horse/Trainer/Jockey/Morning Line
1/Speed Ring/Mark Frostad/Emma-Jayne Wilson/20-1
2/Bear’s Chill/Reade Baker/Emile Ramsammy/2-1
3/Bowman’s Causeway/Chad Brown/Eurico Rosa da Silva/4-1
4/Strike Oil/Mark Casse/Luis Contreras/10-1
5/Sensational Slam/Todd Pletcher/Jose Lezcano/6-1
6/Imhotep/Todd Pletcher/Javier Castellano/20-1
7/Check Your Soul/Roger Attfield/Patrick Husbands/5-2
8/Sandy Gully/Cary Brooks/Jono Jones/10-1
9/Hippolytus/Mark Casse/Tyler Pizarro/15-1
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