Arapahoe Park: Vanasee appears due to win another stakes in Columbine

Vanasee has won stakes races at 2, 3 and 4, and on Sunday she will attempt to continue the trend at 5. Vanasee will be making her second start of the year in the $40,000 Columbine, a 1 1/16-mile race for fillies and mares at Arapahoe Park in Aurora, Colo.

Vanasee is one of six stakes winners in the eight-horse field that also includes Lady Contender, winner of the recent $40,000 George Wafer Memorial at Arapahoe, and Unloch the Fury, the runner-up in last year’s Columbine who could go favored off an allowance score at SunRay Park in New Mexico.

Vanasee made her first start of the year June 2, and finished 12th in the $43,000 Ingrid Knotts at Arapahoe. The race came over six furlongs, and for the Columbine she will be stretching back out to the distance of her last stakes win, the Spicy, which came in her 2011 finale last August at Arapahoe. Vanasee’s other stakes wins have also come in Aurora, in the Colorado Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association Lassie at 2, and the Colorado Stallion Stakes at 3.

Scherzi, who was fourth in last month’s $40,000 Molly Brown at Arapahoe, is seeking to be the fourth next-out winner to emerge from that race. That group includes seventh-place finisher, Exponential, who returned to win a claiming race at Arapahoe and runs back in the Columbine.