JDLP Holdings’ Princess Mayfair will look to make her stakes and New York debut a winning one in this coming Saturday’s $100,000 Busanda, a nine-furlong route for sophomore fillies, at Aqueduct Racetrack.
The Busanda is the first Kentucky Oaks prep race of the year in New York, and offers the top-five finishers 20-10-6-4-2 qualifying points, respectively, towards the prestigious Grade 1 test on the first Friday in May at Churchill Downs.
Trained by Woodbine-based Steven Chircop, the Kentucky-bred Princess Mayfair boasts a record of 3-1-1-0 over the Woodbine Racetrack synthetic having made a rapid ascent from a second-out graduation sprinting 5 1/2-furlongs on December 2 to a strong second last out on December 16 traveling a two-turn 1 1/16-miles.
Chircop, who is based at Woodbine and has 23 stalls this winter at Penn National, said the West Coast dark bay endured a troubled start to her race career.
“She’s been a very difficult horse to train early on in her career. She had a lot of antics,” Chircop said. “One day, she flipped over, got loose and fell on the road and fractured an eye socket. We had to send her to the University of Guelph clinic and while she was there she got pneumonia from another horse. She was on target to run early and we had a lot of setbacks.”
Chircop patiently developed the promising Princess Mayfair, a $50,000 purchase at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale, breezing her 10 times over the Woodbine Tapeta ahead of her debut. The well-bred dark bay is out of the winning Speightstown mare Toast of Mayfair, who is a half-sister to 2017 Grade 1 Belmont Stakes-winner Tapwrit and multiple graded stakes-winner Ride a Comet.
“We got her on course and started working her back slowly. She showed a lot of potential,” Chircop said.
Chircop enlisted Champion jockey Emma-Jayne Wilson to help prepare Princess Mayfair, but plans went awry when Wilson was injured in a spill on November 2 just nine days before a difficult debut when a distant ninth sprinting six-furlongs under Ryan Munger.
“She’s a high-temperament horse and Emma spent a lot of time with the horse and seemed to bring her down a level,” Chircop said. “We had to change riders which was the furthest thing from ideal on that horse. He worked her and she worked good and I expected big things from her first time out, but as it happened our pony that day was a white pony and she wanted no part of being anywhere near the pony.
“She ran away from the pony and almost went into the fence,” continued Chircop. “They had to corral her behind the gate and then she threw the rider off. Everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. She broke from the gate and made a right-hand turn and was more focused on running away from horses as opposed to just running. She ran horrible based on our expectations.”
Chircop regrouped with the filly, adding blinkers and earplugs along with a sharp gate work on November 26 that resulted in a narrow gate-to-wire maiden score despite jockey Jose Luis Campos losing his crop at the sixteenth pole.
“We did a lot more schooling with the pony – which she had always been fine with in the morning – and that second race she put it together,” Chircop said.
Princess Mayfair exited her maiden win in good order and Chircop said he contemplated a number of options for her ahead of Woodbine’s Closing Day on December 17, but first-level allowance races against her own kind at seven furlongs didn’t fill.
Instead, he entered Princess Mayfair in a 1 1/16-mile route against the boys and she left the gate at odds of 19-1 with Campos up to set splits of 24.89 seconds, 50.82 and 1:15.26 under pressure from Competitive Touch. She opened by two lengths at the stretch call but was collared in the final 70 yards by Jayhawk, who had finished a good third one start prior in the Grade 3 Grey for Hall of Fame trainer Mark Casse.
“The third time she was completely different. She was much better,” Chircop said. “She ran against the boys and she ran against a couple nice horses – the one that was pressing her on the lead [Competitive Touch] is a decent King’s Plate prospect and she put that horse away and kicked on. She just got beat by a horse of Casse’s that ran well in the Grey.”
Chircop said the result confirmed the high hopes he has for Princess Mayfair.
“She went from 5 1/2-furlongs to a mile and a sixteenth in two and a half weeks, which would have never happened but for the timing of the year,” Chircop said. “She reiterated everything we thought about her before she’d run.”
Princess Mayfair breezed back a half-mile in 50.18 Friday over the Penn National dirt.
“All our works at Penn National are a bit slow but Julio Hernandez worked her and he was happy with her. She worked good enough that it’s not a concern to run her,” Chircop said. “We figured while her mind is good, we’d try to take advantage of some of these races.”
Chircop, who won his only previous Big A start with Romantic Gamble in March, said he’s confident Princess Mayfair can hold her own as she prepares to make her first dirt start.
“Until you run on the dirt you don’t know, but she’s bred up and down for it,” Chircop said. “I’d feel better at a mile and a sixteenth but I think she fits well with those horses.
“She has the talent, no question,” added Chircop. “It’s all about keeping her brain together. Touch wood, the horse is changing night and day for the better at this point in time.”
JDLP Holdings has won 16 races since 2019 and four more in partnership with Chircop. The owner is said to be from Pickering, ON.
~ with files from CT Staff
More from Canadian Thoroughbred:
