Two Emmys, ‘Bizzee’ face off

Two Emmys and Bizzee Channel met three times last summer at Arlington. This summer, there is no Arlington, but the two older turf-route horses face off again in the $75,000 Outbound Ike Stakes on closing day of Hawthorne’s spring-summer meeting.

Two Emmys is the more accomplished of the pair, having won the Grade 1, $600,000 Mr. D. Stakes last August and the $300,000 Muniz Memorial this past March, but the Muniz is contested at 1 1/8 miles and the Mr. D. was at 1 1/4 miles, and at Saturday’s 1 1/16-mile trip the gap between the two narrows.

With Arlington shuttered this year – and likely permanently – by parent company Churchill Downs Inc., and Hawthorne committed to a summer harness racing meet, the lights go out on the Thoroughbred season in Chicago after Saturday’s program. They won’t come back on until Hawthorne commences a fallwinter meeting in mid-September, but the best grass horses in Illinois could at least light some closing-day fireworks.

Two Emmys was favored in the Elkhorn Stakes over 1 1/2 miles on April 23 at Keeneland, his most recent race, and had a clear excuse for a fading seventh-place finish. The temperature in Lexington had spiked that afternoon, and trainer and co-owner Hugh Robertson said Two Emmys suffered from heatstroke. Robertson took his time getting this diminutive 6-year-old gelding back going again, but while Two Emmys enters on an encouraging work pattern, he’s drawn on the rail at a distance short of his best. Two Emmys and Marcelino Pedroza, who comes in from his Horseshoe Indianapolis base to ride, could have their work cut out.

Two Emmys has banked about $770,000, roughly $300,000 more than Bizzee Channel, but Bizzee Channel has seven wins to Two Emmys’s five and beat him in two of their three common contests last summer. Bizzee Channel won a 1 1/16mile allowance by more than two lengths over Two Emmys and narrowly bested him in the 1 3/16-mile Arlington Stakes, though he could only finish fifth in the Mr. D. as Robertson brought his horse to a peak for the big payday.

Bizzee Channel also has the benefit of a race – and win – over the Hawthorne turf course this spring, and with leading rider Jareth Loveberry named by leading trainer Larry Rivelli, Bizzee Channel’s 5-1 morningline price seems much too high.

So, too, does the 6-1 on Captivating Moon, whose career bankroll also is a rich $634,000 and change, and who was second, beaten just a halflength by Bizzee Channel, in a stakes-class Hawthorne turf allowance May 28. Captivating Moon would benefit from a strong, contested pace and is win-shy, with just one victory in his last 18 starts.

If there are morning-line prices set too high, then someone must be too low, and that appears to be Current, whose predicted win odds are just 5-2. Current does hail from the barn of local super-trainer Brittany Vanden Berg (10 for 25 wins this meet) but, to an even greater extent than Two Emmys, always has preferred longer turf distances than this and hasn’t won a stakes race since the Bourbon in October 2018, when Todd Pletcher trained him.

The Outbound Ike is the sixth of 10 races on a card that starts at 2:50 p.m. Central.