Skelly Continues Winning Ways In Lake Hamilton

Skelly (5g Practical Joke x Adande, by Bwana Charlie) continued his Oaklawn Park domination on Saturday with a 2 ¼ length victory in the Lake Hamilton Stakes.

The Steve Asmussen trained runner broke in the back of the pack of the six-furlong dirt race but was easily able to catch the leaders and run three wide. There wasn’t much of a challenge put up when he started to shake off his rivals in the far turn and once they were gone, he built a strong lead.

Kept focused by Ricardo Santana Jr. in the stretch, no other runner was able to seriously close on him with Skelly winning by 2 ¼ lengths and the third placed runner nearly seven lengths behind him.

Skelly has won nine of his last 10 races with his lone loss coming in the Group III Riyadh Dirt Sprint in Saudi Arabia, where he finished second. Raced by Red Lane Thoroughbreds, he has finished worse than second only once in his 15 race career with 10 wins overall for $1,574,163 in earnings.

Skelly is out of a half-sister to multiple graded stakes winner Isotherm and Grade III winner and Grade I placed Giant Game in addition to Grade I-placed Gio Game. Another one of her half-sisters is also a stakes producer as the dam of the stakes winner and Grade I-placed The Wine Steward.

Practical Joke has seen his runners win four stakes since April 5 with two of those coming from Skelly.