Toronto, ON (SportsNetwork.com) – Brown Panther and Big Blue Kitten have been made the two favorites for Sunday’s $1 million Canadian International to be run over Woodbine’s E. P. Taylor turf course at 1 1\/2 miles.<\/p>\n
Brown Panther, trained by Tom Dascombe, comes in from Europe and is the 2-1 morning line favorite with Richard Kingscote slated to ride from post 4. Big Blue Kitten is the 3-1 second pick for trainer Chad Brown and owners Ken and Sarah Ramsey. The 6-year-old will break from post 9 in the 10-horse field with leading jockey Joel Rosario in the saddle.<\/p>\n
The last four runnings of the International have been won by horses coming in from overseas, with Joshua Tree claiming the last two editions along with the 2010 race.<\/p>\n
Brown Panther comes into the International off a victory in the Irish St Leger at the Curragh in Ireland. The 6-year-old, trained by Tom Dascombe, won the 1 3\/4-mile stakes by 6 1\/2 lengths as a 14-1 longshot.<\/p>\n
“It was a hugely exciting day and the race went absolutely to plan,” said Dascombe. “It was a thrilling result as it was my first Group 1 winner and something I’ll always remember.”<\/p>\n
Brown Panther, owned by Andrew Black and former star English footballer Michael Owen, has earned $1,106,547 with 10 wins, four seconds and three thirds from 24 career starts.<\/p>\n
“He’s won two listed races over a mile and a half and he was just beaten about four lengths in the (Group 1) King George over a mile and a half,” noted Dascombe about Brown Panther. “As long as there’s a nice pace in the race it won’t bother him. He won’t want a crawl.”<\/p>\n
Former United Nations Handicap winner Big Blue Kitten will be making his debut at Woodbine in Sunday’s International.<\/p>\n
Big Blue Kitten posted wins last year in the United Nations and Sword Dancer sandwiched between runner-up finishes in the Monmouth Stakes and Turf Classic at Belmont Park. He finished eighth in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Turf.<\/p>\n
This season, Big Blue Kitten won the Lure at Saratoga followed by a second in Monmouth’s Cliff Hanger and fourth in the Turf Classic.<\/p>\n
“It was a little disappointing,” Brown said about the Turf Classic on Sept. 27. “We really liked him going into the race. There wasn’t a lot of pace in the race. It wasn’t a bad effort but it wasn’t a winning effort, either. But he came out of the race in great shape, he’s training well.”<\/p>\n
Big Blue Kitten has won half of his 22 career starts for $1,288,530.<\/p>\n
Here is the field for the International in post position order: O’Prado Ole, Channing Hill, 20-1; The Pizza Man, Florent Geroux, 6-1; Suntracer, Carlos Marquez Jr., 12-1; Brown Panther, Richard Kingscote, 2-1; Dynamic Sky, Patrick Husbands, 15-1; War Dancer, Luis Contreras, 12-1; Hillstar, Ryan Moore, 5-1; Pyrite Mountain, Jamie Spencer, 12-1; Big Blue Kitten, Joel Rosario, 3-1 and Reporting Star, Justin Stein, 20-1.<\/p>\n
The International will have an approximate post time of 3:32 p.m. ET and will be aired live on TSN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Toronto, ON (SportsNetwork.com) – Brown Panther and Big Blue Kitten have been made the two favorites for Sunday’s $1 million Canadian International to be run over Woodbine’s E. P. Taylor turf course at 1 1\/2 miles. Brown Panther, trained by Tom Dascombe, comes in from Europe and is the 2-1 morning line favorite with Richard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}