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Trainer Josie Carroll will send out the likely favorite in Woodbine’s $150,000 Victoria Park Stakes when Matt’s Broken Vow takes on five other 3-year-olds going 1 1/8 miles June 8.

The only graded stakes winner in the field, Robert Mitchell’s Broken Vow colt took the 1 1/16-mile Marine Stakes (gr. III) at Woodbine in his last start May 17. It was his first win off a maiden score going six furlongs at Fair Grounds March 15. Bred in Kentucky by Nicholas Lotz out of the Ascot Knight mare Marianka, Matt’s Broken Vow was a $60,000 Keeneland September yearling sale purchase.

Trainer Mark Casse doubles his chances at the listed event when he sends out two starters - William S. Farish’s Bonanza, second in the Marine, and Bill Farish and George Bolton’s Catch Air, a maiden winner.

Bonanza, a son of Jump Start, won the April 25 Wando Stakes with a sweeping outside move before missing the Marine victory by just half a length. He also has an allowance score from last November to his credit, earned three starts after he broke his maiden at Woodbine in September.  

Catch Air, a Kentucky homebred by Langfuhr, will need to develop longer staying power after his two recent frontrunning attempts resulted in seventh-place finishes in an allowance and in Fair Grounds’ Grindstone Stakes, both on the turf. Prior to that, Catch Air broke his maiden on the turf at Fair Grounds. He has run twice over Polytrack before, those starts coming at the beginning of his career when he was sixth and third last fall.  

Third to Matt’s Broken Vow in the Marine was the Arthur Silvera-trained Discreet Commander, a Deputy Commander gelding owned by a partnership of D. Rowbotham, D. Lindskog, H. Mackinnon, E. Richer, and T. Boogmans. Although he has yet to gain his own graded victory, Discreet Commander does lay claim to a stakes win – he took the 1 1/16-mile Display Stakes at Woodbine last November, leading wire-to-wire. He shares the high weight of 121 with Matt's Broken Vow.