NEWS
Parade Clown shoots for win in Battaglia
Posted: Thursday, February 26, 2009 3:20 PM
PARADE CLOWN
EquiSport photo
by Jeff Apel
Parade Clown will try to win his second consecutive local prep for the Lane’s End Stakes (G2) on Saturday when he faces seven three-year-olds in the $100,000 John Battaglia Memorial Stakes at Turfway Park.
The $500,000 Lane’s End Stakes on March 21 is a 1 1/8-mile race for North American classic hopefuls. Parade Clown enters off a 2 3/4-length victory on February 7 at the Florence, Kentucky, track in the WEBN Stakes, a local prep for the Lane’s End Stakes.
Trained by Katherine Ball for Donamire Farm, Parade Clown entered his stakes debut in the WEBN off a runner-up finish in a one-mile allowance race on January 14 at Turfway. The gray or roan colt concluded his two-year-old campaign by posting a 2 3/4-length win in a 1 1/16-mile maiden special weight race on December 19 in his first start on Turfway’s synthetic Polytrack surface.
Proceed Bee is the only other stakes winner entered in the Battaglia Memorial Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile race. The Bernstein gelding posted a three-quarter-length win on turf in the Grand Canyon Handicap on November 29 at Churchill Downs.
William Stiritz’s Proceed Bee finished fifth in the Smarty Jones Stakes in his three-year-old debut on January 19 at Oaklawn Park for trainer Terry Gestes.
Stakes-placed winner Dynamite Bob and Shanes Gold, who is unbeaten in two starts this year for trainer John Good, were also entered in the Battaglia Memorial Stakes.
Dynamite Bob finished third, 14 lengths behind Parade Clown, in the WEBN.
Shanes Gold posted both of his wins this year at Turfway, and will make his first start beyond 6 1/2 furlongs in the Battaglia Memorial Stakes. The Yankee Victor colt captured a 5 1/2-furlong maiden claiming race on January 8 prior to winning a six-furlong allowance/optional claiming race on February 4.
Jeff Apel is a Thoroughbred Times TODAY assistant editor
