Top Fillies Square Off in E.P. Taylor

It’s pretty much the same every year—a world-class cast of fillies and mares are assembled at Woodbine to square off with $500,000 on the line in the Oct. 16 E.P. Taylor Stakes Presented by HPIBet (Can-IT). This year is no different with a pair of runners each from Chad Brown and Bill Mott and international flavor from Aidan O’Brien and John Gosden.

O’Brien is chasing the late Bobby Frankel’s record of 25 grade/group I wins in a season and at present has 20 wins on the flat. Seventeen of his winners have come from sons and daughters of supersire Galileo (IRE) and he’ll send out the 3-year-old Best In The World in the 1 1/4-mile Taylor. While she’s yet to try a grade/group I race, she’s done well and come to hand in her last pair: a win in the group III ISF EBF Give Thanks Stakes at 12 furlongs at the Curragh in August and a runner-up effort, beaten a half-length, in the Sept. 11 Moyglare Jewels Blanford Stakes (Ire-II) at the Taylor distance.

The Gosden-trained Swiss Range, also a 3-year-old, is a Juddmonte Farms’ homebred who finished fourth last time out behind O’Brien’s top Minding in the Qatar Nassau Stakes (Eng-I) during Glorious Goodwood.

Brown fires a double barrel shot with Lael Stables’ Rainha Da Bateria and the Chilean-bred Guapaza. The former, by Broken Vow  , is in top form having just missed by a head while third in Saratoga’s grade I Diana Stakes, then got a win over the local course Sept. 17 in the Canadian Stakes (Can-IIT) under Julien Leparoux.

Guapaza is 2-1-2 in six starts this year in North America and won Saratoga’s Fasig-Tipton Waya Stakes (gr. IIIT) in August. Last time out she was a disappointing sixth in the Glens Falls Stakes (gr. IIIT) behind the Mott-trained Suffused.

Suffused is also a Juddmonte homebred and has won a pair of stakes in her first year of racing in North America with Mott.

Mott’s other runner drew the outside 13 slot. Valor Ladies’ Tuttipaesi makes her sixth start of the year over her sixth different course. A winner at Santa Anita in March in the Santa Ana Stakes (gr. IIT), she’s finished in the frame in her three starts since including a close-up fourth behind the Brown-trained Sea Calisi in Arlington International’s Beverly D. Stakes (gr. IT).

Despite the quality of the shippers—both from the East Coast and Europe—don’t discount local Strut the Course. Canada’s champion older female in 2014, John Unger’s 6-year-old mare will be making her 11^th start over the turf at Woodbine and was fourth, beaten two lengths, in last year’s Taylor.