Roger Attfield targeting ninth Queen’s Plate win with Colleen’s Sailor on 24 June
Veteran Canadian trainer, Roger Attfield is on the verge of making history this year. Attfield has gone on the win the Queen’s Plate Stakes eight times in his career, but he is not the only one to achieve that feat, as trainer Harry Giddings Jr. has saddled
eight winners to win the “Gallop for the Guineas” and the score is tied now, but Attfield has always something up his sleeve.
This time around, Roger Attfield has a runner in Colleen’s Sailor, who will represent the conditioner in this year’s Queen’s Plate – set to go underway on 24 June, 2012, over the Woodbine dirt course.
The 1 ¼ mile event 16, 3-year-old colts and geldings, and Attfield is hopeful that he will go nine up this year, and become the first trainer in history of the event to do so.
"It would mean a whole lot," Attfield said of the opportunity to hold the record outright. "I hold the record for (winning) the most Prince of Wales (in the Triple Crown era) and the Breeders' (Stakes) and I've equaled the one for the Queen's Plate. I've
won three Triple Crowns, which is a record also, so this would put the icing on the cake and make me champion of all of it."
This year though, Attfield was short one runners who had experience going over two turns, and with a bunch of maidens, things looked bleak, but in came Colleen’s Sailor from the care of trainer Brian Lynch, who had previously run over two turns last year
that made him the favourite to start for the Queen’s Plate.
"All I had were maidens," Attfield explained. "He ran twice as a two-year-old going two turns which really helps going into a three-year-old year.”
Roger Attfield has rider John Velazquez for big event, but since the jockey broke his collarbone at Churchill Downs a couple of nights back, the trainer will have to do with the last rider who won over Colleen’s Sailor.
That man is Corey Nakatani, who guided Colleen’s Sailor home to a 1 1/8 mile victory in an allowance race over the Woodbine’s synthetic surface.
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