Canadian Ballet Back in the Winner’s Circle after the Jenny Wade Handicap

by Sarah Mace

It would be a tall order for five-year-old Canadian Ballet, New York’s 2009 Champion Older Female, Turf Female and Female Sprinter, to duplicate her successes of last year – a campaign in which her only finish out of the exacta came in the Breeders Cup Turf Sprint. Her victory in the $100,000 Jenny Wade Handicap at Penn National on Friday may mean, however, that the Linda Rice trainee campaigned by Obviously NY Stable is coming back into form after two sub-par turf sprint tries in stakes earlier in the year.

Canadian Ballet went to the post for the five-furlong turf event as the odds-on favorite with jockey Stuart Eliot, who had ridden her to most recent victory in the Turf Amazon Handicap at Philadelphia Park last September. As the most accomplished of the seven older fillies and mares signed on, she was carrying the high weight of 118. Right after the break Canadian Ballet drifted right from her outside post, but once Elliot got her straightened out, she assumed the lead with authority, ticking off fractions of 21.60 and 43.46. By the top of the stretch, she had put as much as two lengths between herself and the competition. Out Post, a four-year-old daughter of Silver Deputy making her stakes debut, posed the only serious threat, looking like she might be able to wear Canadian Ballet down before the wire. With urging, however, Canadian Ballet held on to preserve the win by a neck. The final time of the race was 55.64 over a firm turf course.

Canadian Ballet’s sixth lifetime black type victory in the Jenny Wade improved her record to 8-4-1 from 20 starts and increased her earnings to $575,702.  Sired by City Zip (who stood in New York from 2002-2004 at Gus Schoenborn Jr.’s Contemporary Stallions), and bred and raised by Schoenborn, Canadian Ballet is one of three winning New York-bred full-siblings, all bred by Schoenborn, out of six-time winner Canadian Flagship ($97,708), including two-time stakes-placed Vasa ($90,942). Canadian Ballet was sold privately.

Source URL: https://www.nytbreeders.org/news/2010/07/31/canadian-ballet-jenny-wade/

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