Captivating Moon looking like lone local rep in Arlington Million

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Three horses pre-entered in the Secretariat Stakes are based at Arlington, but the only local among the Beverly D. or the Arlington Million pre-entries is Captivating Moon. It’s hardly a powerhouse home team, but it will have to do.

“Why not give it a shot?” Captivating Moon’s trainer, Chris Block, wondered Monday morning.

Block and Captivating Moon’s owner and breeder, Bob Lothenbach, were to huddle up one more time before final entries for Saturday’s three Grade 1 turf stakes were due Tuesday morning. Block figured that Captivating Moon, who need only walk a third of a mile over to the track from the stall he’s called home all summer, will wind up in Saturday’s big race.

It’s not an entry made under wild illusions. Everyone knows Bricks and Mortar, 4 for 4 this year with three Grade 1 wins, is the heavy Million favorite and will be an absolute bear in the race. The other pre-entrants are Bricks and Mortar’s Chad Brown-trained stablemate Robert Bruce, who won the 2018 Million and figures to be second choice this year, and Bandua, Catcho En Die, Hunting Horn, Intellogent, Magic Wand, Pivoine, and The Great Day.

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Captivating Moon has raced once this year at age 4, closing for third here July 13 in the Arlington Handicap. Block, who earlier this summer became Arlington’s all-time leading stakes-winning trainer, has started one other horse in the Million, Mystery Giver, who came out of a 10th-place finish in 2004 with a suspensory ligament injury.

Block sees in Captivating Moon a horse who will stay the Million’s 1 1/4-mile distance and whose high-water mark, a second-place finish in the American Turf in May 2018 at Churchill, could propel him to a decent placing Saturday.

“Bricks and Mortar stands out, then there’s another tier a little better than Captivating Moon, and then he falls in that next group,” Block said. “If he can just go forward from that race in Kentucky, I think he can hit the board.”

Most shippers coming late this year

Intellogent and Pivoine, overseas horses expected for the Million, and Awesometank, who is slated for the Beverly D., arrived at Arlington on Saturday night, but major players are coming later to this party.

Chad Brown, whose firepower threatens to overwhelm the Grade 1 segment of the program, is shipping his contingent from New York on Wednesday, he said. Brown, who won the Million and Beverly D. and finished second in the Secretariat in 2018, has Bricks and Mortar and Robert Bruce for the Million; defending champion Sistercharlie, Competitionofideas, and Thais for the Beverly D.; and Fog of War and Valid Point for the Secretariat.

The five horses shipping here from Ireland for trainer Aidan O’Brien – Magic Wand (also pre-entered in the Beverly D.) and Hunting Horn for the Million, Fleeting for the Beverly D., and Van Beethoven and Never No More for the Secretariat – were due to arrive Tuesday.

◗ Hotshot Anna, defeated as an odds-on favorite in the June 29 Chicago Handicap when returning from a long layoff, scored a sharp turf-sprint allowance win Saturday at Arlington, earning a 96 Beyer Speed Figure and putting her on course for trips to Presque Isle Downs for the $100,000 Satin and Lace Stakes next month and the $400,000 Presque Isle Downs Masters in September, races she easily won in 2018.