Moment of Weakness looks for duel in Eddie Logan

ARCADIA, Calif. – All Moment of Weakness needs in Friday’s $75,000 Eddie Logan Stakes at Santa Anita is a rival willing to take him on.

In his first three American starts, trainer Jamie Lloyd has noticed that the gelding performs best when running alongside a horse, and not as well when clear. The quirky style has yet to result in a win in this country, but Moment of Weakness was second to the multiple stakes-winning 2-year-old Comma to the Top in the Grade 3 Generous Stakes on turf at Hollywood Park on Nov. 27.

“It looks like he wants to be in a dog fight,” Lloyd said. “He needs to be in between horses. In the Generous, at the three-eighths pole, he was all alone and backing up. A horse came on the inside of him and one on the outside, and he picked it up.”

Moment of Weakness is part of a field of eight in the Logan, which is run over a mile on turf for 2-year-olds. Moment of Weakness has won 2 of 7 starts, with both wins on an all-weather surface at Dundalk, Ireland, in April and May.

Lloyd hoped to start Moment of Weakness in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf in November, but a ninth-place finish in the Grade 3 Bourbon Stakes at Keeneland in October ended this plans.

“If he’d run in the first three, we would have thought of it,” he said. “We decided to regroup.”

The field includes one stakes winner – Celestic Night, winner of the C.B. Afflerbaugh Stakes at Pomona in September – and the stakes-placed Major Art, who has not started since finishing 10th in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity in September and was third in the Vintage Stakes in England in July.

Dominator is another runner with European experience, having won a maiden race in Scotland in August. A half-brother to the multiple stakes winner Battle of Hastings, Dominator was sixth, beaten 3 3/4 lengths, in the Generous.

“When you look at what Comma to the Top has done, he was beaten by a serious racehorse and not by very much,” trainer Doug O’Neill said. “He seems like he’s moving in the right direction.”

There also will be support for the entry of Robie the Cat and Ten Devils, winners of maiden races on turf at Hollywood Park in the fall.