Captivating Moon, Just Might switch it up in style

Surface switches might have changed the trajectory of 2021 campaigns for two Saturday stakes winners at Fair Grounds.

Captivating Moon, who had been racing on dirt, notched a surprise win in the Fair Grounds Stakes on turf, while Just Might, who came in with high-level turf form, scored a standout dirt victory after the Colonel Power Stakes was rained off grass.

Just Might got a career-best 101 Beyer Speed Figure in the 5 1/2-furlong Colonel Power, which he won by five lengths after blasting to the lead. Captivating Moon equaled his career-best Beyer, 97, winning the Fair Grounds Stakes, his first turf race in his last nine starts.

Captivating Moon had been a turf horse during an active 3-year-old season in 2018, when he placed in seven grass stakes. But after a seventh-place finish in the 2019 Arlington Million, his connections began focusing on dirt, over which Captivating Moon had made 12 of his last 13 starts before Saturday.

Captivating Moon had been fifth or sixth in his four starts before the Fair Grounds, leading Chris Block, who trains the homebred for Lothenbach Stables, wondering what would come next.

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“I was thinking that I either got to stop on this horse or change something up, because he looks like nothing out there,” Block said.

Block entered the horse in the 5 1/2-furlong Colonel Power and the 1 1/8-mile Fair Grounds, and in an effort to shake Captivating Moon out of his doldrums had been leaning toward cutting him back in trip in the Colonel Power. Rain moved that race to dirt, and while Block had no interest in dirt-sprinting Captivating Moon, he hoped the Fair Grounds also might wind up on the main track. The Fair Grounds stayed on a soft turf course – and Captivating Moon posted the biggest stakes upset of the Fair Grounds season, going from last to first to win by 1 3/4 lengths at odds of 43-1.

“The only thing I was hanging my hat on was that he likes the soft turf,” Block said. “But I guess just getting him back on turf woke him up.”

Captivating Moon, Block said, is a likely runner next month in the Muniz Memorial – on turf.

Just Might, a 5-year-old gelding co-bred, co-owned, and trained by Michelle Lovell, won the 2020 Colonel Power over the Fair Grounds grass course and went on to finish third in a pair of Grade 2 grass sprints last summer and fall and earn a shot in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint. There, the confirmed front-runner broke flat-footed and lost all chance, coming back with a pair of seconds in Fair Grounds grass-sprint stakes this season.

Just Might impressed on a sloppy track winter at Fair Grounds and Lovell said he’d trained well enough on dry dirt that she didn’t hesitate to leave him in the Colonel Power on Saturday. Just Might outsprinted his pace rivals and won in a romp.

“I think he handles any track fine, but I didn’t know he’d do it quite as impressively as he did,” said Lovell, whose partner in Just Might is Griffon Farms.

Lovell said Just Might was “jumping out of his skin” early this week and came out of his race in excellent shape. Just Might could be nominated to the Hot Springs Stakes on March 13 at Oaklawn but Lovell hasn’t decided whether to give dirt another try or await the Shakertown on the Keeneland turf course in April.

Bottom line – sometimes change can be a good thing.