Inaugurated 1860 Surface Tapeta | Race type Thoroughbred Purse 1 million CAD | |
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Location Woodbine Racetrack
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Website woodbineentertainment.com/queensplate Distance 1 ⁄4 miles (10 furlongs) | ||
2017 01 07 queen s plate rsa legal eagle
The Queen's Plate is Canada's oldest thoroughbred horse race, having been founded in 1860. It is also the oldest continuously run race in North America. It is run at a distance of 1 1⁄4 miles for a maximum of 17 three-year-old thoroughbred horses foaled in Canada. The race takes place each summer, in June or July, at Woodbine Racetrack, Etobicoke, Ontario, and is the first race in the Canadian Triple Crown.
Contents
Race replay 157th running of the queen s plate
History
Initiated in 1859 by the then president of the Toronto Turf Club, Sir Casimir Gzowski, the Queen's Plate was inaugurated on June 27, 1860, at the Carleton racetrack in Toronto, Ontario, with the prize of 50 guineas awarded by Queen Victoria. In 1902, the year after Victoria's death, the race became the King's Plate, after her successor, Edward VII. It became the Queen's Plate again when Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952.
Woodbine Racetrack hosted the race in 1876 and 1881 and then continuously from 1883 to 1955. The Queen's Plate has been running at Woodbine since 1956.
The record time for the race since 1957, the year in which the track was set at its current length of 1 1⁄4 miles, is 2:01 4/5, set by Kinghaven Farms Izvestia in 1990.
Horses owned by Windfields Farm have won the Queen's Plate eleven times, but the most successful was the stable owned by Joseph E. Seagram, a prominent distiller from Waterloo, Ontario. Seagram's stable won it on twenty occasions between 1891 and 1935 including eight times in a row between 1891 and 1898, and ten times in eleven years from 1891 to 1901.
In 1964, Northern Dancer, the first Canadian-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derby, also won the Queen's Plate in his final race.
In 2006, Josie Carroll became the first woman trainer to ever win the Queen's Plate. The following year, Emma-Jayne Wilson became the first female jockey to win the race.
The 2004-2013 Plate winners have had little success in their subsequent racing careers. This compares unfavourably to the 1990s when a number of Plate winners had considerable success thereafter: With Approval, Izvestia, Dance Smartly, Alydeed, Peteski, Basqueian, Victor Cooley, Awesome Again.
Nick Eaves, former President and CEO of Woodbine Entertainment Group, announced during the 2012 Queen's Plate post position draw that Woodbine Racetrack may be forced to close in April 2013 due to the cancellation of Slots at Racetrack program partnerships between Ontario's racetracks and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. Eaves said that if Woodbine is not open, "there won't be a Queen's Plate." A new funding agreement was put in place in March 2013, which ensured the continuation of horse racing at Woodbine for the next 2 years and affirmed the 154th running of the Queen's Plate.
The race has been held at a variety of distances:
Royal patronage
As Queen of Canada, Queen Elizabeth II is patron of the event, and various other members of the Canadian Royal Family have been in attendance through the years, beginning with the Duke of Argyll and his wife, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, in 1881, when the Duke was serving as Governor General of Canada and the couple was touring Ontario. Elizabeth II's most recent visit to the race was in early July 2010.
Records
Stakes Record
Winningest Jockeys:
Winningest Trainers:
Winningest Owners: