Stakes Saturday: Canadian International, QE II lead lineup

Each week, the NTRA will provide a guide to the best stakes races in North America and beyond. Races are listed in chronological order with all times Eastern.

Top-level action on the turf is this weekend’s theme with Woodbine hosting two Grade 1 tests over its E.P. Taylor course and the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup highlighting Keeneland’s Saturday card.

Here's what to watch for:

Ten fillies and mares, including a pair of starters who have recorded high-profile victories at Woodbine, will contest the E.P. Taylor Stakes. Holy Helena, an eight-time winner from 19 starts, counts the 2017 Queen’s Plate, two editions of the Grade 3 The Very One, and the Grade 2 Sheepshead Bay among her stakes triumphs. Blue Heaven Farm’s Starship Jubilee, trained by locally based Kevin Attard, arrives at the E.P. Taylor off an outstanding repeat score in the Grade 2 Canadian Stakes. Under Luis Contreras, the ultra-consistent six-year-old daughter of Indy Wind romped to a 4 1/4-length triumph in the Canadian, a win that pushed Starship Jubilee’s record to 13-4-3 from 30 lifetime starts.

Godolphin's Romantic Pursuit will look to build on her first stakes appearance as part of a talented seven-horse field in the Sands Point at 1 1/8 miles on the Belmont Park inner turf. Romantic Pursuit, finished fourth in the 1 3/8-mile Jockey Club Oaks Invitational on September 7 at Saratoga Race Course and entered her stakes bow with two consecutive wins. The Kentucky homebred, 2-3-1 in eight career starts, ran her first three races on the main track before being moved to grass, where she has gone 2-2-0 in five starts. Her last-out start in the Jockey Club Oaks Invitational was her only race on softer turf.

OXO Equine’s Cambier Parc, winner of the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks in her most recent start, tops a field of nine 3-year-old fillies entered for the 36th running of the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup contested at 1 1/8 miles on the Keeneland turf course. Cambier Parc is one of three fillies trained by two-time race winner Chad Brown. The others are Paul Pompa Jr.’s Regal Glory and Peter Brant’s Café Americano. Brown won the race last year with Rushing Fall and in 2012 with Dayatthespa. Regal Glory is the lone Brown runner to have run at Keeneland, having finished second in this spring’s Grade 2 Appalachian Stakes.

Desert Encounter will be looking to become the first repeat winner of the Canadian International since Joshua Tree in 2012-2013 when he headlines a field of six. Desert Encounter went off at 8-1 when he captured last year’s Canadian International, defeating fellow English shipper and favorite Thundering Blue by a length. The Irish-bred gelding returns while riding the wave of three consecutive Group 3 turf stakes scores, all in England. His last success came at Newbury in the Dubai Duty Free Legacy Cup, a 1 3/8-mile race in which he had finished a close third last year while prepping for the Canadian International.