Continued: Jockey Baze doubles down

Thanks to a recent knee surgery, Theresa DeNike wasn't moving very swiftly when she arrived at Canterbury Park for Saturday's Claiming Crown. By late afternoon, though, she was running to the winner's circle -- not once, but twice.

DeNike and her husband, Edward, sent four horses to the Claiming Crown from their Northern California base and engaged Russell Baze to ride them. The winningest jockey in history made it a grand day for DeNike and a dozen family members from Stillwater, winning the $75,000 Claiming Crown Glass Slipper with Frisco Fox and the $75,000 Rapid Transit with You're My Boy Blue. Just for good measure, Baze also finished third in the $100,000 Tiara aboard Bartok's Bling and third in the $100,000 Emerald with Stormy Surge, enriching the DeNike stable purse by $102,500 in a little less than three hours' work.

The 11th annual Claiming Crown belonged to the out-of-towners, headlined by the star jockey corps that came to Shakopee. Julien Leparoux, second in the nation with $9 million in purse earnings this year, timed his ride perfectly to win the $50,000 Express on Chasing the Prize. Robby Albarado's brilliant handling of Mizzcan'tbewrong brought her home first in the $100,000 Tiara, and Jamie Theriot matched Baze with two victories, including a historic score for Antrim County in the $150,000 Jewel.

Canterbury Park won big, too, with a crowd of 11,324 and total handle of $2,422,992 bet on the seven Claiming Crown races. But no one had a better afternoon than DeNike and her family, many of whom were visiting the track for the first time.

"It's awesome. It's fantastic," said DeNike, a native of Wausau, Wis., who lives in Kent, Wash. "We really wanted to have horses here, since I have family here. And we just had a great, great day."

Canterbury's largest crowd this season saw several dramatic finishes, but no victories by locally based horses or riders. DeNike's first trip to the winner's circle was prompted by a horse that almost didn't come: You're My Boy Blue, a late entry who was added to the group because the plane from California had room for one more horse.

Baze tucked the gelding in behind the leaders in the 6-furlong Rapid Transit and took him outside to run down All Joking Aside in the stretch. He rode Frisco Fox in similar fashion in the 6-furlong Glass Slipper, and those betting Baze were well rewarded. Those horses returned the highest win payoffs of the Claiming Crown races, as Frisco Fox paid $25.20 and You're My Boy Blue returned $16.20.

Mizzcan'tbewrong was the only Claiming Crown winner to have run at Canterbury this year. The winner of the Minnesota HBPA Mile earlier in the meet battled old nemesis Love to Tell, who had beaten her twice in her past six races, in the Tiara. Albarado's masterful rail trip -- and the filly's deep reserve of grit -- helped her prevail by a neck in a race-record time of 1 minute, 41.97 seconds for the 1 1/16th miles on the turf.

Theriot won the $50,000 Iron Horse with Bright Hall, then captured the Jewel with last year's Iron Horse winner. Antrim County became the first horse to win two different Claiming Crown races, staving off Fancy Runner by a neck in a gripping stretch duel. The 2008 national claimer of the year, Antrim County won 10 of 15 races during a year in which he was claimed for $7,500 in May and for $50,000 six months later.

"He's a fighter," trainer Bret Calhoun said. "He's game, he's sound and he'll just dig in. We're very fortunate to have a horse like him."

In the day's other featured races, Happiness Is sprang a surprise in the $100,000 Lady Canterbury Breeders' Cup Stakes. She hung on in the stretch to beat heavily favored Euphony, who had won six consecutive stakes races. Eyesa High won the $18,450 Fort Dodge Central Starter Allowance Challenge, the day's lone stakes race for quarter horses.

DeNike got faster as the day went along, getting to the winner's circle much more quickly in her second trip."We might even have had another [winner] if the Emerald had been a little longer, because Stormy Surge had some traffic trouble," she said.

"But I'm not complaining."