Corey Lanerie, Keeneland’s sixth leading rider of all time by wins, will secure his 5,000^th career victory if Manny Wah wins the $350,000 Stoll Keenon Ogden Phoenix (G2) on Friday’s opening day of the Keeneland Fall Meet. The duo won the race last year.

A longtime regular on the Kentucky circuit, Lanerie rode his first winner at Keeneland during the 2000 Fall Meet and was the track’s leading jockey of the 2015 Fall Meet. He has won 13 stakes here, including three victories in the Central Bank Ashland (G1) – aboard Hooh Why (2009), Weep No More (2016) and Sailor’s Valentine (2017) – and the 2015 Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity (G1) on Brody’s Cause. 

Lanerie, a Louisville resident, also has captured numerous Churchill Downs titles. In 2014, he won the prestigious George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, which “honors riders whose careers and personal character earn esteem for the individual and the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing.”

Lanerie, 48, grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, a region known for its horse racing culture and the starting point for some of the sport’s most successful riders. His grandfather was a trainer and his father was a jockey and trainer. Lanerie honed his riding skills at informal weekend race meets before launching his professional career in 1991 and winning his first race that year at Evangeline Downs in Louisiana. 

Only 37 North American jockeys have won 5,000 races. Among jockeys listed as active, Lanerie is 12^th behind Perry Ouzts (7,417 wins as of Oct. 3) and John Velazquez (6,537). The overall leader is Russell Baze (12,842) followed by Laffit Pincay Jr. (9,530), Bill Shoemaker (8,833), Pat Day (8,803) and Ouzts.

Lanerie is named on three mounts Sunday.