Captivating Moon to skip Arlington Classic

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – The best 3-year-old grass horse stabled at Arlington won’t be running in the first 3-year-old turf stakes this season at Arlington.

To put it another way, Captivating Moon isn’t starting Saturday in the Arlington Classic.

“I think we’re going to pass that and wait for the American Derby,” said Chris Block, who trains Captivating Moon for owner and breeder Bob Lothenbach. The American Derby will be run July 7.

Captivating Moon, who was second here last September in the Grade 3 Arlington-Washington Futurity, already has raced four times this year. He won a first-level turf allowance at Tampa Bay Downs to start his season, finished a troubled second there to Gidu in the $75,000 Columbia Stakes, was second at Keeneland in the Transylvania to the unbeaten star Analyze It, and on May 5 at Churchill slogged his way over boggy ground to finish second in the American Turf.

“He’s had a very active spring, and that last race over that wet turf, it really knocked him out for a few days,” Block said. “He’s recovered nicely, and I think the time off that we’re going to give him will freshen him up to take a better shot at things in midsummer and fall. If the American Derby works out, we’ll stay here for the Secretariat. I told Bob that what you get from him at 3 is great, but this horse is only going to get better as a 4- and 5-year-old.”

Captivating Moon is by Malibu Moon and out of Appealing Storm, and Appealing Storm is quite the broodmare. Her most successful offspring is the Grade 1 winner Vacare, and she also has produced the stakes-winning turf horses Single Solution and Nobody’s Fault as well as the $374,000 earner Abtaal.

Block said he has a good-looking set of eight 2-year-olds in his Arlington barn for Lothenbach, among them a sister to Captivating Moon.

On Saturday, Block sent out 3-year-old first-time starter Wile E Peyote to victory in an Illinois-bred maiden race. Wile E Peyote dug in to win gamely while appearing to be less than fully fit, and his pedigree – by City Zip and out of the good racemare Happy Henrietta – is very encouraging by statebred-restricted standards.