Military Time wins Prince of Wales Stakes as Fort Erie betting tops $2M

Military Time held off Brachetto by half a length to win the $400,000 Prince of Wales Stakes at the Fort Erie Race Track on Monday.

The Prince of Wales is the second of the three races that make up the Canadian Triple Crown, the top prize for Canadian-born three-year-old horses.

Fort Erie Race Track reported one of its largest Labour Day turnouts in years. Bettors wagered $2.02 million over the full day and betting at the track on the Prince of Wales itself rose 20 per cent.

Thousands of spectators dressed for the occasion. Many wore wide-brimmed hats, long dresses and lace parasols in a custom that dates to the race’s first running in 1929.

Dozens of women entered the track’s Ladies Fashion Show presented by Lasting Impressions of Ridgeway, a new feature of the Prince of Wales this year.

Jockey Fraser Aebly, 22, won his first Canadian classic aboard the three-year-old colt, who covered the mile and three-sixteenths on the dirt in one minute 56.02 seconds. Buium finished third and Keepmypowderdry fourth in the field of eight.

“He was fighting for me the whole race, it was crazy,” Aebly said after the race. “This is a childhood dream come true.”

Military Time stayed in third place for most of the race while Keepmypowderdry and Fire and Wine led. On the final turn, Aebly steered him to the outside to get past the leaders. Brachetto came up the inside at the same time, and the two horses were nose-to-nose until Military Time pulled ahead just before the finish line, and the crowd let everyone know it.

The track said in a release the race “had fans on the edge of their seats right to the last second.”

Food trucks lined the grounds, with one vendor roasting a whole pig over an open fire for the lunch rush.

Volunteers from the Fort Erie Underwater Recovery Unit collected donations at the front gate to support the non-profit’s property-recovery dives in the Niagara River and its free youth scuba program.

The second race honoured Rick Shular, a Ward 2 councillor from 2003 until his death in December 2014 and a member of the Kinsmen Club of Fort Erie for 48 years. Awe Inspired, ridden by Luis Reyes, won the race.

Military Time was the betting favourite and paid $5.80 on a $2 win ticket. Trainer Mark Casse earned his fifth Prince of Wales win and his first since Wonder Gadot in 2018.

Military Time finished second to the filly Luster in the $1-million King’s Plate at Woodbine in Toronto on August 15. Luster skipped Monday’s race, so no horse can win the Triple Crown this year. Wando remains the last horse to sweep all three, in 2003.

Jockey Pietro Moran won three other races on Monday, including the Puss n Boots Cup on a horse named Quiet Intent. Every year the winning jockey and trainer of that race jump into the pond in the middle of the track, and Moran and trainer Tino Attard kept the tradition alive.

The Breeders’ Stakes, the final leg of the Triple Crown, is scheduled for September 27 at Woodbine over a mile and a half on grass. Military Time’s owners and trainer had not said on Monday whether he would run.

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