G3 Winner English Bee Making Laurel Debut in Henry S. Clark
At 0h02, on April 20, 2023 • By LAUREL PARK
Calumet Farm’s well-traveled multiple stakes-winning homebred English Bee, who has raced at 11 tracks in six states during his career, will add another venue to the list when the 7-year-old gelding makes his Laurel Park debut in Saturday’s $100,000 Henry S. Clark.
The 23rd running of the one-mile Clark for 3-year-olds and up is among five $100,000 stakes on the second of consecutive Spring Stakes Spectacular Saturdays at Laurel, and one of the first three scheduled for its world-class turf course, along with the one-mile Dahlia and 5 ½-furlong King T. Leatherbury.
Also on the 11-race program are the 1 1/8-mile Native Dancer for 3-year-olds and up and six-furlong Primonetta for fillies and mares 3 and older. First race post time is 12:25 p.m.
Based with Graham Motion at the Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Md., English Bee has raced twice nearby at historic Pimlico Race Course, where he earned his first stakes victory in the one-mile James W. Murphy on grass on the undercard of the 2019 Preakness Stakes (G1). Later that year the son of turf champion English Channel would go on to win the Virginia Derby (G3) at Colonial Downs and Parx Derby in successive starts.
Since then, English Bee has run 19 times with two wins and has been beaten by five lengths or less in 11 graded-stakes. Most recently he was fifth by 2 ¾ lengths in the March 4 Canadian Turf (G3) at Gulfstream Park, where he returned from eight months between starts with a determined neck victory in a one-mile optional claiming allowance Jan. 13.
“I’ve kind of run him in some tough spots,” Motion said. “He came back and ran super in the allowance race to start the year. This race just sort of appealed to me as a place to kind of get him back on track. He’s doing really well. I couldn’t be happier with him.”
The Clark will be the third start this year for English Bee, who raced only four times in 2022 and went to the sidelines following his fifth-place finish in Pimlico’s Dinner Party (G2), also on Preakness Day. Overall, he has seven wins and $563,825 in purse earnings from 29 starts, and is 5-for-11 at the one-mile distance.
