Racing

Beach Walkn Takes Wednesday’s Featured Margaux Purse

Jockey Corey Lanerie wins 5,000th race earlier on card

Michael and Katherine Ball’s homebred 20-1 longshot Beach Walkn pushed her head in front at the finish to win Wednesday’s featured $110,000 Margaux Purse for fillies and mares at Keeneland. (Click here for a video of the race.)

Trained by Ben Colebrook and ridden by Luan Machado, Beach Walkn covered 1 1/16 miles on the turf course labeled good in 1:44.20.

Beach Walkn paid $42.28, $12.90 and $7.82. Runner-up Hola Gata, ridden by Tyler Gaffalione, returned $3.38 and $3.00 with Around the Sun finishing another head behind in third under Francisco Arrieta and paying $11.34 to show.

The victory was worth $62,233 to Beach Walkn, who improved her record to 7-2-1-1 with earnings of $129,734. The Kentucky-bred daughter of Cross Traffic is out of the City Zip mare China Grove.

Colebrook and Machado also teamed to win the following race with KRA Stud Farm’s Knicks Storm, a 2-year-old son of Dialed In making his career debut.

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In Race 3, jockey Corey Lanerie recorded the 5,000th victory of his career when he rode 2-1 favorite I Feel the Need to a 3½-length victory.

A 4-year-old daughter of Keen Ice trained by Chris Hartman, I Feel the Need is owned by Denny East, Jerry White, Mark Young and Michael Post. Her time for 1 1/16 miles was 1:45.93.

“It’s beautiful,” Lanerie said about reaching the milestone. “I have been waiting a long time and it seems like I got right on it and I could never get over the hump, but today we got over the hump and hopefully we keep rolling.”

Lanerie is the 38th North American rider to have 5,000 wins.

Click here for an interview with Lanerie by Keeneland Racing Analyst Tom Leach.