Corluna gives trainer Delany first stakes win

The Evangeline Downs-based trainer Sarah Delany left the beauty shop for the racetrack in 2012 and on Sunday her decision to change career paths reached a pinnacle when Delany won her first stakes race. The Delany-trained Corluna won the $50,000 Lane’s End Danny Shifflett Scholarship Stakes at Lone Star Park.

“For me, it was like winning the Kentucky Derby,” said Delany. “Corluna is very special – I’ve had her since she was a 2-year-old. She’s my dream horse.”

Corluna, a 4-year-old who races for her breeder, Ian Yarnot, was winning her first stakes race, too, Sunday.

“I’m so blessed to have owners like Ian Yarnot,” said Delany.

Delany, a 41-year-old native of Hondo, Texas, won the first race of her training career in 2012 at Sam Houston.

“I grew up in the horse business – not the racing business,” she said. “My grandfather trained roping and reining and cutting horses. I got my first racehorse in 2012 just to have fun. The horse, Big Scrape, got me addicted to racing. He was like my life. I was a hairdresser. I was a color specialist and I quit. It was the best thing I ever did!”

Delany has 19 horses in training at Evangeline, where she works alongside her husband, Bennie Martinez. There are promising 2-year-olds coming up, she said. Corluna, meanwhile, maintains rock-star status in the shed row.

“Everybody loves her,” Delany said. “She’s so loving and so sweet and she has floppy ears. The floppy ears make her. They just make her. Everybody knows her as the floppy-eared horse.”

Corluna will now be considered for races like the Fiesta Mile at Retama Park and the River Cities at Louisiana Downs, said Delany.