Spooky Channel, an 8-year-old English Channel gelding who gave Jason Barkley his first stakes and graded stakes victories as a trainer in 2021, rallied wide into the stretch under Joel Rosario to win Saturday's Grade 2, $300,000 Muniz Memorial Classic Stakes by a half length at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, La.
Pace-setting Rising Empire finished second under Florent Geroux, with Gentle Soul and Reylu Gutierrez3 1/4 lengths farther back in third, and Flavien Prat and Another Mystery fourth in the field of nine older runners. Atone, the G1 Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational winner, was sent off the 4-5 favorite under Luis Saez but finished last after pressing the early pace.
Spooky Channel covered the about distance of 1 1/8 miles on firm turf in 1:54.11 and paid $9.20 to win.
The complexion of the Muniz changed significantly when Two Emmys, a dyed-in-the-wool front-runner, was scratched by the stewards on the advice of the track veterinarian just prior to the field reaching the starting gate.
Bred in Kentucky by Calumet Farm, Spooky Channel campaigns for John Ballantyne, Art Neuhedel and Daryl Shaw's 's NBS Stable, which claimed him for $80,000 out of an allowance/optional claiming race at Churchill Downs in April 2021. Spooky Channel began his career at Turf Paradise in 2018, winning six of eight starts at the Arizona track, then heading to the Midwest and East Coast. He won his first graded stakes, the G3 W.L. McKnight Stakes at Gulfstream, in January 2020 for trainer Brian Lynch, then added the G3 John B. Connally Turf Cup at Sam Houston in January 2021. Three starts later, he was claimed by Barkley, who took out his trainers license in 2015.
Four starts later, Spooky Channel gave Barkley his first stakes win in the Remington Green Stakes at Remington Park, then provided the conditioner with his first graded triumph in Keeneland's G3 Sycamore Stakes next out.
Spooky Channel was sidelined more than a year after that victory, then came back to win the Buddy Diliberto Memorial Stakes at Fair Grounds in his first start off the layoff on Dec. 26, 2022. He finished third in the Connally in a return trip to Sam Houston Jan. 28, then trained up to the Muniz at Fair Grounds.
Rosario, riding Spooky Channel for the first time, allowed the gelding to settle behind horses early as Rising Empire set slow fractions of :24.55, :51.44 and 1:15.34 for the first six furlongs. Spooky Channel had one horse beat in the run down the backstretch before rallying wide on the turn. He was seventh rounding into the stretch, but head and head with Rising Empire at the eighth pole, the mile clocked in 1:54.11, then took command in deep stretch.
The Muniz Memorial Classic, inaugurated in 1992 as the Explosive Bid Stakes, was renamed in 2003 in honor of the late Mervin R. Muniz Jr., the longtime racing secretary at the New Orleans track.
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