NEWS
Stakes winner Racing Bran takes aim at Claiming Crown Jewel
Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 6:17 PM
by Frank Angst
With a pair of stakes wins under his belt this season, Racing Bran will try to take the most lucrative prize on Saturday in the Claiming Crown Jewel Stakes at Canterbury Park.
The $150,000 Jewel is one of six Claiming Crown races on Saturday’s card, worth a total of $500,000. The Claiming Crown, in its 12th renewal, celebrates claiming horses by offering stakes races restricted to horses that have started in claiming races in 2010 or ’09.
Racing Bran registered five victories racing in the Midwest last year and was twice claimed in 2009. This year the five-year-old Awesome Again gelding has won three of five starts, including victories in the $100,000 Essex Handicap at Oaklawn Park and the $85,725 Milwaukee Avenue Handicap at Hawthorne Race Course.
Owner William Stiritz and trainer Scott Becker will enter Racing Bran in Saturday’s 1 1/8-mile race for three-year-olds and older off a runner-up finish to Shadowbdancing in the $300,000 Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap (G2) on June 26. Racing Bran has won ten of 25 starts and has earned $354,794 in four seasons of racing.
This year’s Claiming Crown races have attracted 52 starters from throughout the nation.
• In the $100,000 Emerald Stakes, Grade 2 winner Inca King figures to battle Gran Estreno (Arg), a Group 1 winner in Argentina, in the 1 1/16-mile turf race. Ken and Sarah Ramsey’s Inca King enters off a third-place finish in the Firecracker Handicap (G2) on July 4 at Churchill Downs while Feel The Thunder Stable’s Gran Estreno makes his first start since finishing third in the Hanshin Cup Handicap (G3) on May 29 on the Arlington Park Polytrack.
• Sea Gaze will be looking for his third straight victory when the six-year-old Graeme Hall gelding starts in the $50,000 Iron Horse. Owned and trained by Steve Asmussen, Sea Gaze has won 13 of 41 starts but will try to secure the first black-type of his career in the 1 1/16-mile race.
• Coby Tresner’s Esperamos had won three straight races before being edged by a head in a June 10 claiming race at Churchill Downs. The six-year-old Stormy Atlantic gelding will try to secure his first career stakes-placing in the $50,000 Express Stakes, a six-furlong race.
• In the $75,000 Glass Slipper, four-time stakes winner Miranda Diane will seek the most lucrative victory of her career in an expected field of eight fillies and mares going six furlongs. Miranda Diane has registered two stakes wins at Will Rogers Downs this year.
• Zoeling will try for his third straight victory when he starts in an expected field of 11 three-year-olds and older in the $75,000 Rapid Transit Stakes at six furlongs. Zoeling enters off a three-quarter-length victory in the Leemat Stakes on June 25 at Presque Isle Downs, the first stakes win of his career.
The day also includes the $100,000 Lady Canterbury Stakes, where Danzon enters off a narrow victory in the Locust Grove Handicap (G3) on July 3 at Churchill Downs. The seven-year-old Royal Academy mare will try to secure her sixth career stakes win in the one-mile turf race for fillies and mares.
Frank Angst is senior staff writer of Thoroughbred Times
