A longshot from the beginning, Two Emmys favored in Colonel E.R. Bradley
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NEW ORLEANS – Hugh Robertson has a 3-year-old he bred, owns, and trains, I’m Your Captain, set to debut in the ninth race Saturday at Fair Grounds. The horse has talent, evidently, yet Robertson is less than thrilled to start a homebred of modest provenance in a maiden sprint that attracted two horses who brought seven-figure auction prices and has more than $4.5 million worth of sales purchases entered.
Yet evidence exists right in the Robertson shed row that purchase price doth not make the horse.
Robertson has become a master at plucking bargains out of the sprawling Keeneland September yearling sale. In 2017, he bought an English Channel colt there for $4,500, partnering with Randall Wolfe’s Wolfe Racing. That horse, now a gelding, now 6, is named Two Emmys and is approaching $600,000 in career earnings. Last March, he gave Pegasus World Cup Turf winner Colonel Liam a run for his money here in the Muniz Memorial, finishing second, and in August, he beat North America’s best turf horse at the time, Domestic Spending, to win the Grade 1 Mister D. Stakes, formerly the Arlington Million.
Two Emmys was roughly 25-1 in the Muniz and 27-1 in the Mister D. When he begins his 2022 campaign Saturday, he’ll be favored to win the $100,000 Colonel E.R. Bradley Stakes.
Two Emmys hasn’t started since he took a tough beat trying 1 1/2 miles for the first time in the Sycamore Stakes on Oct. 22. Robertson subsequently gave Two Emmys a planned break, awaiting the Fair Grounds meet, and the gelding is fit and ready. Robertson even toyed with running Two Emmys last month in the Buddy Diliberto Memorial.
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“He’s training like he always did – didn’t lose much. I’m sure I could have run him here last month off one work,” Robertson said. “He weighs probably 900 pounds, 950 maybe. And he ran a mile and a half last time, too. That puts a little air in them – you don’t realize how long these horses maintain their fitness.”
The Bradley drew 12 entrants and a surprising number of front-running sorts. Two Emmys has done his best work on the engine but might not be quick enough to lead into the first turn.
“If they send hard, he doesn’t need to be in front,” Robertson said.
Fair Grounds saves the inside lanes of its turf course for these multi-stakes cards, and the rail typically is the best place to race. Logical Myth drew the fence, and trainer Joe Sharp said his sixth place Diliberto finish can be excused due to the horse slipping on a turn.
Halo Again led all the way in the Diliberto, his turf debut, and “definitely took advantage of a lack of pace,” trainer Steve Asmussen said, though Halo Again had never led early his first nine starts.
Major Fed, one of the better 3-year-olds of 2020, makes his turf debut and is very much bred for the surface. His dam, Bobby’s Babe, was a grass horse, and her first six foals to race (Zapperini is the best of them) preferred turf to dirt.