Lane Way rolls home in the Clockers’ Corner (Ernie Belmonte/Past The Wire)
Mike Willman/Santa Anita Press Box
ARCADIA, Calif.— Attentive to the early pace, Richard Mandella’s consistent Lane Way took command at the top of the lane and marched to an impressive 2 ½ length win over heavily favored Motorious in Sunday’s $100,000 Clockers’ Corner Stakes at Santa Anita. Contested at about 6 ½ furlongs down the hillside turf course, 6-year-old gelding Lane Way, with Mike Smith up, stopped the clock in 1:12.05.
Breaking from the far outside in a field of seven older horses, Lane Way was a close third, about 1 ½ lengths off of pacesetter Yeng Again leaving the half mile pole, Lane Way got on terms with the leader at the dirt crossing and was never threatened through the drive as Motorious rallied from off the pace for the place.
“From the time I got on him he was just oozing a lot of confidence today, a little more than normal,” said Smith, who was aboard for the fifth consecutive time today. “I could tell that he was going to run a big one today. A lot of times he will wait on horses, today he actually ran away from them.
“It was impressive. He settled nice and finished really strong. He is always consistent, but he was a little different today.”
Most recently second coming down the hill in the Grade II Joe Hernandez Stakes Dec. 31, Lane Way was off at 2-1 and paid $6.00, $2.40 and $2.10.
Owned by a large group from MyRacehorse, Lane Way, who is by Into Mischief out of the Aldebaran mare Corderosa, notched his first-ever stakes win and he now has two wins and as many seconds from four consecutive tries down the hillside turf.
With today’s winner’s purse of $60,000, he increased his earnings to $367,560 from an overall mark of 17-4-6-5.
“We needed that,” said Mandella. “It looked like when he left there, he looked serious and just the way it set up it looked good all the way I thought.”
“We will get him home and think about it tomorrow, there’s lot of things we can do with him.”
For his part, Motorious put in his customary late run, but the early pace, 22.28 and 43.87, was quite a bit slower than the 21 flat and 42.40 opening quarter and half he was able to exploit in taking a second condition allowance down the hill on Jan. 2.
In search of his third consecutive win today with Flavien Prat up, English-bred Motorious was off at 3-5 and paid $2.20 and $2.10 while finishing a half length in front of longshot Respect the Code.
Attentive to the pace with Kent Desormeaux, Respect the Code was off at 13-1 and paid $3.40 to show.
Complete fractions were 22.28, 43.87 and 1:06.08.
Racing resumes with first post time for an eight-race card on Friday at 12:30 p.m.
