Crown Queen Making a Name for Herself
Besilu Stables’ Crown Queen, a half-sister to a multiple champion and two-time Breeders’ Cup winner who earned more than $4.8 million, will make her next start in Saturday’s $500,000 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Presented by Lane’s End (G1). The 3-year-old Smart Strike filly has been showing off her own talents, winning three consecutive races on the turf, most recently the Aug. 16 Lake Placid (G2) at Saratoga. Crown Queen has made five starts, all on the grass, and has earned $293,000.
Rodolphe Brisset, trainer Bill Mott’s assistant at Keeneland, was asked to compare Crown Queen to her accomplished older half-sister, Royal Delta, another Mott trainee.
“Physically, totally different,” said Brisset, who was Royal Delta’s exercise rider. “But I get a lot of similarities when galloping (Crown Queen): covering a lot of ground, long stride. Crown Queen is more like (her dam) Delta Princess. Her mother was not easy to be around.”
Crown Queen, who has been at Keeneland for about 1½ weeks, has “actually settled very good since she’s been here,” said Brisset, who credited Mott’s team in Saratoga for its work with the filly.
Royal Delta won 12 races on dirt, but Crown Queen prefers the turf like her dam. Also trained by Mott, Delta Princess, by A.P. Indy, made all but one of her 30 starts on the surface. She won 11 races on the grass, including six stakes. Three of those wins came in Grade 3 events.
“We found out very quickly – the way she’s made and the way she was breezing at 2 – we kind of knew she was going to be a turf horse,” Brisset said about Crown Queen.
Crown Queen was a weanling when owner Ben Leon Jr. purchased her for $1.6 million at Keeneland’s 2011 November Breeding Stock Sale. At the same sale, he spent $8.5 million for Royal Delta and in 2012 raced her to her second consecutive win in the Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic (G1). Royal Delta was the champion older mare in 2012 and 2013.
John Velazquez will ride Crown Queen, who will break from post 8 in the field of nine fillies entered for the QE II. Velazquez won the race in 1995 on Perfect Arc and in 2008 with Alwajeeha.
Source: Keeneland