ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Cabana is 3 for 3 on Arlington Park’s turf, and in her most recent appearance on the local grass course, she comfortably won the 2015 Mike Spellman Memorial Handicap. Cabana raced in April at Oaklawn Park, got a freshening, and returned with a very solid second June 9 in a Churchill Downs turf allowance that suggests she’s in form plenty strong enough to win the Spellman for the second year in a row – except for the fact that Lovely Loyree is in the race, too. A $50,000 statebred race like the Spellman doesn’t typically draw a horse with recent running lines like those of the 5-year-old mare Lovely Loyree. She has shown talent all along, but she hit a new peak last fall and winter, and in her last two races, graded grass stakes at Tampa Bay Downs, she finished third behind the mighty Tepin. All Tepin did earlier this week was win the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes against males at Royal Ascot. “It’s kind of heady running against a horse like Tepin,” said Michele Boyce, who trains Lovely Loyree. “It may be a case where somebody had to be third, but I think it was more than that. There were a lot of good horses in those races.” Yet Boyce hardly sees Lovely Loyree, the co-highweight with Cabana at 123 pounds, as a cinch Saturday. Lovely Loyree hasn’t started since March 12, and Boyce had assumed that Arlington would card some sort of race that would serve as a prep for the Spellman. That didn’t happen, and in Lovely Loyree’s first work after a freshening, she was ridden incorrectly, Boyce said, and went far slower than Boyce wanted. “I’m concerned about my ability to have her razor sharp packing high weight with no prep under her,” Boyce said. “I don’t think it’s quite a level playing field.” A third horse, Prado’s Sweet Ride, has a fighting chance in the 1 1/16-mile Spellman. She ran well below her best form in her two most recent starts but was a steady Grade 3 performer on turf last year at 3 and will be making her first start against Illinois-breds on Saturday. ◗ Eleven horses are entered in the $50,000 Black Tie Affair, the companion race to the Spellman, and the depth of trainer Chris Block’s influence in the Illinois turf division has never been in greater evidence. Block currently trains four of the Black Tie Affair entrants – Sweet Luca, Bold Rally, Peej, and Cammack – and at one point trained three other horses in the race: Revolt, A Step Ahead, and Five Green Stars. Sweet Luca raced just one week ago in the Addison Cammack Stakes, a six-furlong Polytrack race. Three furlongs out, Sweet Luca looked like a sure winner, only to flatten out and finish third, but that performance might have Sweet Luca set for a winning run in the Black Tie Affair. In fact, Block employed the same pattern last August, when Sweet Luca finished third in the Cammack on Aug. 1 and missed by a nose Aug. 8 in the Black Tie Affair. Sweet Luca ran decently two starts ago in a turf mile that he probably needed for fitness in his first start of 2016, and he attracts the services of leading rider Jose Valdivia on Saturday. Amen Kitten is the tepid 4-1 morning-line favorite for trainer Wesley Ward, and his very best races would make him formidable at this class level. But those races came in 2014 and 2015, and Amen Kitten, a 6-year-old, has not looked like the same horse in two starts this year since returning from a 10-month layoff.