Not often does a horse who has won three of his last four starts and six of his last ten get sent off as the longest shot on the board.

Sure, Captured (Alluring, by A. P. Indy) was taking a rise in class today.  He was trying $8,000 starter company, as opposed to the $4,000 starter company he had been facing in his last two starts, and the $4,000, $5,000, $6,250 claimers he had been facing before that.  But, the came at a mile and seventy yards over the Penn National dirt.  Captured has not raced away from Penn National in a year and a half, and all of his recent form has come at between a mile and a mile and a sixteenth over the dirt.  His form was solid, and he was at home.

Sure, on class alone, chalk made no sense.  The field he faced was not an easy one.

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Yesterday did not start off on the best foot with the Curlin babies, when Air Squadron lost rider Jose Lezcano at the start of the first race at Gulfstream yesterday.  Curlin’s Gem righted the ship three races later, when he broke his maiden.  Later in the day, down at Oaklawn, Ride On Curlin got his four-year-old year off to a rollicking start with a thrilling allowance win.

The final Curlin baby to race yesterday was Captured (Alluring, by A. P. Indy).  The four-year-old gelding has been a fairly consistent runner in the claiming ranks, with four wins in fourteen starts going into yesterday, plus a first and a second.  He finished second in open $6,250-$6,000 company at Laurel on January 3, going a mile and seventy yards.  Yesterday saw him back at his home track, Penn National, where he had already won three times.  He returned to that mile and seventy yards on the main track, but notched down to $4,000 open claiming company for that start.

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