King’s Plate champion Luster to take extended break, won’t run in Prince of Wales

TORONTO – Two emphatic wins have earned Luster a little downtime.

Trainer Josie Carroll said the heralded filly has come out of her dominant King’s Plate victory in fine form. However, with five races under her belt already this season (four wins, third-place finish), Carroll added Luster has earned an extended break and won’t chase the OLG Canadian Triple Crown.

Luster won’t run in either the $500,000 Prince of Wales Stakes on Sept. 7 at Fort Erie Racetrack or the $500,000 Breeders’ Stakes at Woodbine on Sept. 27, the final two legs of the Triple Crown.

“We feel that as easy as she has made everything look, she has had five starts this year,” Carroll said Wednesday. “She’s just a little filly; it would probably be a little much to jam her right back into the Prince of Wales and Breeders.

“She’s definitely earned the break. She doesn’t want to take a break, but she has earned a break.”

Luster won the $1-million King’s Plate by a commanding 7 1/4 lengths Aug. 15 at Woodbine Racetrack. She came into the race following a dominant 5 1/2-length victory in the $750,000 Woodbine Oaks on July 19, also at Woodbine.

Instead, Carroll said the connections will look at possibly having Luster run in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland on Oct. 11. That race covers 1 1/8 miles (the Plate was 1 1/4 miles while the Oaks was 1 1/8) and is a turf event for three-year-old fillies.

Wando remains the last horse to win the Canadian Triple Crown, doing so in 2003. Carroll, who was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2019, came close to ending Wando’s reign in 2020 when Mighty Heart captured both the Plate and Prince of Wales.

Mighty Heart, whose left eye was removed following a paddock accident when he was only a few weeks old, held the lead in the Breeders’ Stakes. But he faded late in the 1 1/2-mile turf race and finished seventh behind stablemate Belichick.

With such a dominant filly in her stable, Carroll admits there’s some disappointment that Luster won’t take a run at the Canadian Triple Crown.

“There actually is because that run for it with Mighty Heart was really thrilling,” Carroll said. “It takes such a good horse to do the Canadian Triple Crown, I mean, we’re on three different surfaces (synthetic, dirt and grass) and there’ve been very few horses that have been good enough to do it.

“I know I have a horse in my hands that’s a little bit exceptional, and she would be one you’d think would have the potential to do something like that. We really want to develop a horse for the future, not just have a three-year-old, and for the partnership, going south of the border and trying a Grade 1 would be important to them as well.”

The 1 3/16-mile Prince of Wales is run on a dirt track at Fort Erie, a surface some horses struggle on. Luster has never run on dirt, but Carroll said that really wasn’t a consideration for the team.

“It might have been had we been considering it simply because it’s a surface she’s never run on,” Carroll said. “But truthfully, it was more the number of starts and the effort that she puts into each start.

“She certainly lays it all down there every time. She just loves to train, loves to run, which is obviously a great asset in a racehorse.”

Carroll had two horses in the Plate as Don Ique rallied to finish fifth in the race. But Carroll doesn’t expect to send Don Ique to Fort Erie given he’s been unplaced in two career dirt events.

“Probably not,” she said. “We’d considered Don Ique in there, but his two dirt races were really not on par with his synthetic and turf races.

“I think we’ll wait until the Breeders with him.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 26, 2026.