Page 7 - August/September 2007 The Game

Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper The Game, August/September 2007 7
A Look Back in Time: Fort Erie’s Prince of Wales Stakes and the Canadian Triple Crown
By Gary Poole
For racing fans in the United States, August means Saratoga and Del Mar. To their counterparts in southern Ontario and western New York, from the 1950s to the 1980s, big league summer racing was synonymous with the beautiful Fort Erie race course. Each year the thoroughbred community in Toronto pulled up stakes and traveled down the QEW for a working vacation at the border oval. The colorful infield was filled with an array of flower beds, hedges, trees and lakes. The historic grandstand was right out of the roaring twenties. The track was so picturesquely quaint that it was chosen as the prime setting for the
period movie, The Black Stallion.
With numerous visual attractions, a person could easily forget that a race meeting was taking place. There was however very significant action on track. The annual highlight was Fort Erie’s signature event, its piece de resistance, the Prince of Wales Stakes. Since 1959 it was and still is the season’s premier event and the one thing Canadian racing fans most associate with the track.
The race itself has an even longer history, the inaugural running coming at Leaside’s old Thorncliffe track. The first edition was in 1929, just before the real troubles of the Depression. The winner Lion Hearted earned the goodly sum of $5,310. The purse shrunk shortly thereafter and the race was shuttled between Thorncliffe and the Old Woodbine. It was held at the New Woodbine from 1956 thru 1958. Despite the small pots in the early days, the race boasted such outstanding winners as Archworth, Ace Marine and Canadian Champ.
The race came of age with the move to Fort Erie in 1959. That year, E. P. Taylor, President of the Ontario Jockey Club created a Canadian Triple Crown, consisting of the Queen’s Plate, the Prince of Wales and the Breeders Stakes. It was meant as a stern test for any three year old. Over a four month period, a sophomore would have to be victorious over ten furlongs on dirt, eleven furlongs on one grass course and twelve furlongs of another. Amazingly there was a win- ner the very first year, none other than Mr. Taylor’s own New Providence. He won the Fort Erie leg in the good time of 2:18. His name remains
prominent in international pedigrees today in the third generation of the world’s most fashionable stallion, Storm Cat.
Four years later history repeated itself, as Mr. Taylor swept the Crown again with Canebora. His Prince of Wales was run over a very soft surface in 2:30 3/5. With two wins from five attempts, the series looked easy to master.
Nothing could have been more untrue. During the next twenty six years, not a single horse won all three races. The Plate-Wales double itself was not completed again until 1970 when Almoner accomplished that feat.
Twice more in that decade two outstanding colts L’Enjoleur (1975) and Norcliffe took the first two parts but failed in the final leg. In Norcliffe’s year 1976, the distance of the P.O.W was increased to twelve furlongs. In 1986 Golden Choice became the drought years’ final runner to take legs A and B but miss in leg C.
Despite there being no sweepers, Fort Erie’s premier race was won by some truly exceptional performers during those years. These included turf aces He’s a Smoothie (1966) and Overskate (I978) and also Runaway Groom (1982), the subsequent Travers hero.
Continued Page 8 - See A Look Back in Time