Two Emmys trainer Robertson celebrates by hitting the applesauce
Hugh Robertson celebrated the biggest win of a 50-year training career in high style.
A couple hours after Two Emmys had held off odds-on favorite Domestic Spending to win the Grade 1, $600,000 Mister D. Stakes by a neck, Robertson was back home. “I had a bowl of applesauce,” he said. “And a chocolate milk.”
Robertson was back at his Arlington barn around 4 a.m. Sunday to start another workday. Two Emmys, a 5-year-old English Channel gelding Robertson plucked out of a yearling sale for $4,500, selling half the horse to his partner, Randall Woolf, looked just fine. He had cleaned his feed tub Saturday night and had good enough energy Sunday. “I thought he’d be a little more knocked out,” Robertson said.
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Do not misunderstand. Robertson is in no way, shape, or form looking to run back Two Emmys, who got a career-best 102 Beyer Speed Figure, in short order. He considered not even running in the Mister D., fearing the 126-pound impost assigned older horses would prove too taxing on a light-framed gelding.
“I said to him, ‘Your barn voted yes, your gallop boys voted yes, and your partner voted yes – you have to run,’ ” Robertson’s wife, Terri, said Saturday evening. “He’s been grumpy ever since.”
The Mister D. performance came as a surprise – Two Emmys, after all, was 27-1 – but not out of nowhere. The gelding in his first stakes start set the pace and held a clear second, beaten only by Colonel Liam, who was very sharp at the time, in the Grade 2 Muniz Memorial on March 20 at Fair Grounds. In his only two starts since, Two Emmys had finished second at Arlington to Bizzee Channel, who did stumble at the start of the Mister D. but wound up fifth.
Meanwhile, James Graham put Two Emmys on the lead, walked around the course to the half-mile pole, and got a closing quarter mile in 22.72 out of Two Emmys, who finished too fast for Domestic Spending to bridge the gap.
Plans for the rest of the summer and fall? Nonexistent. “I don’t know, but he’ll probably need a little time. He ran three pretty hard races. You can’t squeeze the lemon dry.”
Meanwhile, Domestic Spending, despite losing to a longshot, lost little in defeat, finishing about as fast as is physically possible for a horse, falling just short of victory.
“I thought the horse ran great, but unfortunately he caught a really slow pace,” trainer Chad Brown said Sunday. “I can’t take anything away from the effort. It didn’t unfold the way we hoped. To try and use the horse to get up there and press the lead, that’s not the way he wants to run.” Brown, glancing at the fractions as the race was unfolding, saw six furlongs go up in an extremely slow 1:16.64. “That’s when my stomach turned a little bit. I just didn’t get a good feel at that point.”
Domestic Spending appeared to have come out of his race in good shape and will rejoin Brown’s string at Saratoga. Brown said his inclination is to give the 4-year-old gelding a breather, then gear him up for the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Del Mar.
Brown won the Grade 3 Pucker Up with Shantisara and finished third in the Beverly D. with Lemista. Shantisara, an Irish-bred French import, improved her Beyer Speed Figure by 15 points, to 87, in her second American start, closing with a purpose to win by three lengths over Oyster Box.
“She’s a hard-trying horse who has really taken to our program, Brown said. “If she keeps coming forward, she could be really good.”
Lemista came close to catching Mean Mary for second in the Beverly D. Mean Mary broke through the gate pre-start, which surely hurt her chances, but Santa Barbara, just the second 3-year-old Beverly D. winner, was very sharp in winning her second straight American Grade 1 race for trainer Aidan O’Brien.
O’Brien said in a text message Sunday that he’d wait to determine any concrete plans for Santa Barbara until the filly had settled back into the training yard in Ireland, but said connections will look at the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf with the possibility of an interim start. Santa Barbara got a 98 Beyer, an eight-point improvement over her figure from her Belmont Oaks win last month.
And finally, there are no set plans for Point Me By, who won the Grade 1 Bruce D. Memorial by 2 3/4 lengths while making only his third start and stakes debut. Point Me By got an 89 Beyer and shipped from Chicago to trainer Eddie Kenneally’s string at Keeneland on Sunday.
“He’s cut-out to be a real nice horse. I think he’ll continue to improve, and he can go farther, I think, because he relaxes so well in his races.”