Veteran Another Mystery tops Block trio in Mystery Giver

Chris Block has gone all Chad Brown on the Mystery Giver Handicap on Sunday at Hawthorne.

Brown seemingly has three horses for every filly-and-mare turf stake in New York – he ran three of four Thursday in the Ballston Spa – and Block entered three of the six in the $75,000 Mystery Giver, a 1 1/16-mile grass race for older Illinois-breds.

Among them is Another Mystery, the 123-pound highweight and sure favorite in a race that could scratch down to five. Readthecliffnotes is likely to opt for a Sunday dirt allowance race over the Mystery Giver, a race in which the gelding was entered mainly in hopes of a rain-off.

Block entering half the field in this kind of race is no coincidence. He trains this trio – Another Mystery, Towering Storm, and Monsteronthemidway – for their breeder, his family’s partnership, Team Block.

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Team Block, as much as any person or entity in Illinois, has suffered from the virtual collapse of Thoroughbred racing in the state. For decades, the Blocks bred most of the best Illinois grass horses, and plenty of dirt runners, too. All three of their Mystery Giver entrants are out of mares they also bred. And Team Block also bred and owned Mystery Giver himself, a three-time winner of the Fair Grounds Handicap and once triumphant in the Grade 2 Muniz Memorial at Fair Grounds.

Also no coincidence – the names Another Mystery and Mystery Giver. Mystery Giver is out of the mare Ioya, who also produced Ioya Two, winner of the Grade 3 Modesty for Team Block. Ioya Two, a great broodmare, produced five stakes winners, including three graded stakes winners, and her last foal to race was Another Mystery.

Another Mystery, by Temple City, is an 8-year-old now, past his best, which was good enough to win the Grade 3 John Connally Turf Cup early in 2022, later that season just missing in the Grade 2 Turf Cup at Kentucky Downs. Both races were contested over 1 1/2 miles, which Another Mystery, at his peak, needed to produce his best run.

These days, he has settled into middle-distance racing at Hawthorne, where he won the $75,000 Buck’s Boy over a similar group in June and a July 25 contest for higher-end allowance horses or $75,000 claimers. Another Mystery got into that race via the claiming price and got out of it unclaimed. Merely repeating those last two showings should be good enough to win the Mystery Giver.

Towering Storm could give him a run, however. Another Mystery has made 41 starts, compared to just two from 4-year-old Towering Storm, which came in Hawthorne turf wins this summer in maiden and first-level allowance competition. Towering Storm cruised to an easy debut win June 30, but his Aug. 4 victory came much tougher, and the work he did that day could propel Towering Storm to a higher level.

Among the horses Towering Storm ran down earlier this month was Man On Attack, the likely pacesetter Sunday. It’s no mystery: He’ll have the Block horses to hold off again.

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