For trainer Wade Sanderson, a productive winter
Laurel allowance score caps three-win week
Ted Black
March 11, 2026
Most folks around Charles Town are likely eager to see this winter come to an end so they can welcome the arrival of much warmer days ahead this spring.
Wade Sanderson may not be one of them.
The Charles Town-based trainer Sanderson is 3-for-14 in 2026 with purse earnings just shy of $93,000. Though there’s a long way to go, those numbers put him on track for the best year of his career.
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In the last week of racing in February and then into the outset of the March cards, Sanderson recorded a trio of winners, two at Charles Town and then one on March 1 at Laurel Park. Two of those victories came courtesy of West Virginia-breds who will be destined for appearances in state-bred stakes next month at Charles Town and then other added-money events this summer and fall.
On March 1 at Laurel, Sanderson saddled Xcellent Start with Fredy Peltroche up to a 12-1 upset in a two-turn, second-level allowance/optional $40,000 claiming event for older runners traveling nine furlongs exactly once around the Laurel main track. A six-year-old Upstart gelding that Sanderson trains for Regulator Racing, Xcellent Start recorded his first win from three seasonal tries and now sports 11 wins and over $300,000 banked from 41 career outings after rallying along the fence to get the one mile and one-eighth in 1:53.61.
“He’s always been one of those horses that has a real strong finishing kick,” Sanderson said of Xcellent Start, who was third in last year’s Sam Huff West Virginia Breeders’ Classic and then second in the Randy Funkhouser Memorial, a pair of three-turn events both won by Teachintherelease. “He had a good trip the other day, and he was able to get up along the fence. He ran well in those two stakes going long here last year, but he was no match for Teachintherelease. But he’s going to go in the first stakes for older boys here in April.”
Sanderson, who has recorded three winners from his first 14 starters this year and now has 68 career training wins with earnings of $1.5 million from fewer than 500 runners, is still in search of his first stakes victory. He could potentially get it this spring or summer with either Xcellent Start or perhaps Juba’s Parade, a solid West Virginia-bred mare who won a two-turn allowance at Charles Town for state-bred fillies and mares as the odds-on choice Feb. 28 two weeks after a modest fourth-place effort in the $200,000 Barbara Fritchie Stakes at Laurel.
“She really ran well the other night,” Sanderson said of Juba’s Parade, who won the $75,000 My Sister Pearl Stakes on Nov. 9, 2024 for previous trainer Kristy Petty. “She really loves the two-turn races up here. I plan to have her ready for that first stakes [$75,000 Original Gold] here in April. She ran okay down at Laurel. I was happy she got fourth in there.”
Three nights earlier Sanderson sent out Hey Boots to a sharp score in a one-turn allowance/optional $15,000 claiming event for older males in what proved to be the five-year-old Bucchero gelding’s first and only start for him. Hey Boots was claimed out of that event for $15,000 by trainer Mike Jones, Jr., from whom Sanderson had claimed the gelding one start prior. Jones had previously claimed Hey Boots from trainer Anthony Farrior.
“That horse is a win machine,” Sanderson said of Hey Boots, who now owns 12 wins and over $215,000 banked from 29 career outings. “I had him for that one start and he won for me. I claimed him off Mike and he turned around and claimed him right back. I didn’t have for long, but he’s a nice horse. He’s really quick away from the gate, which is why he’s always done so well up here.”
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