How Will He Run Today?

It was the shank end of a gray winter afternoon - last Sunday, to be exact - and I was sitting on the couch and playing with the dog, watching TVG, when I looked up and saw the final odds for a race from Santa Anita. It wasn't a live race, of course - TVG can't show them, and don't get me started on how stupid that is - but was rather a replay of the previous day's Sunshine Millions Classic.

I had intended to play some of the Sunshine Millions races on Saturday - I had played a few small early Pick 3's at Santa Anita - but after the NBC telecast was delayed by hockey - ice hockey! - I bagged the whole thing and went for a bike ride with my wife. I didn't look at or call for results, but when I gave up on the races, I had a hunch that I should call in a $50 or $100 win bet on Lava Man and check in the morning. I ingored the impulse, and I remember thinking later that night that he'd probably won easily, and that I was a fool for passing the race.

Well, by the time I saw the replay, I had gotten over my remorse, and was instead watching to see how the race played out. And after seeing the result, and more important, the fractional times, I thought that there were two possible ways of looking at Lava Man's performance in the race, and both point to a fundamental issue facing handicappers.

Before the race, it was inarguable that Lava Man was the most accomplished horse in the race. The common wisdom - which this time happened to be correct - was that if Lava Man ran anything close to the three impressive races he put together in Southern California last year (wins in the Californian and Gold Cup at Hollywood Park, and a third in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar), he would be tough to beat. But since those races, he had thrown in a couple of clunkers, and the question was which horse would show up - the Southern California world-beater, or the traveling stiff?

Lava Man stalked the leaders, made a big move on the far turn, and won by open lengths. The SoCal champ had returned. Or had he?

One way to look at the race, as Mike Watchmaker pointed out in his column in tomorrow's Form, is that Lava Man beat a bunch of tomato cans, and was not all that impressive doing it. He ran a pedestrian Beyer speed figure - 98 - and he was all out to do so. If he replicates that the next time he's in a GI or GII race, this argument goes, he'll have no chance of winning.

But there is another way to look at the race, and it is one that disciples of pace surely noticed immediately. The early fractions of the race were 21 4/5, 44 4/5, and 1:08 3/5; for a nine-furlong race, even on the souped-up main track in Arcadia, this is madness. The horses who were 1-2-3 at the six-furlong mark finished seventh, tenth, and sixth, with the closest about nine lengths behind Lava Man. Lava Man was the only horse near the pace who was still around at the wire, and his 2-1/4 length win, and even the 98 Beyer, are impressive under the circumstances.

These conflicting interpretations bring to mind a fundamental handicapping question. All the methods one can use in plying this great game - I don't use the word "system," because systems, with their inherent rigidity, are destined for failure - fail in one crucial aspect: no matter how accurately they predict the quality of a horse's recent efforts (and there are hot debates about the relative merits of various methods), they cannot predict with 100% accuracy how a horse is going to run today. And what's confusing about this is that a failure in the method can be blamed on a thousand outside factors: bad luck, poor jockey decision, a bounce, an unfavoring track... the list is endless.

So how do I look at it? I am a believer in both speed figures and pace figures. I believe that both, when used in conjunction (with trip notes thrown in), are the most comprehensive and effective way to play the races. Handicappers who favor speed figures without taking pace into consideration, I believe, are destined for failure, as are those who blindly focus on pace. The two are inextricably related, and the horseplayer who doesn't realize this is up against it. The best plays are the horses who have an edge in both in speed and pace figures. This is true at every track, and at every distance.

And what of Lava Man? When he comes back in his next race - the Santa Anita Handicap, for example - the player can either take a stand against him and his 98 Beyer, or can single him enthusiastically, with the belief that his run in the Sunshine Millions Classic was much better than it appeared. But it's impossible to project how he's going to run without knowing who he's running against, not least because the makeup of the rest of the field is going to go a long way in determining his price. And price is another big factor in handicapping... but I'll save that for another post.

Correction

I have to make a correction to my rant about Magna: the Sunshine Millions is indeed on NBC this year, as it's been every year since its inception. I could blame the Daily Racing Form's website, which didn't mention anything about NBC on their Televised races page, but I will take full responsibility myself. This doesn't change my point, but in the interest of fairness and accuracy, I'll eat a small wing of crow.

Origins

There's death in the air tonight. I can't explain why it seems that way; it just is. Sometimes you're just sitting there, enjoying a nice bit of sunshine or fresh air, or a $4,000 claiming race from Charles Town, and you feel it, and there it is: the feeling of death, on your shoulder like a gentle breeze on a soft May afternoon. Hello, my friend, it says, here I am, waiting for you...

If you're normal, you ignore those feelings... you go out for a walk, for a quick half-pint at the neighborhood pub, for some kind of activity that will shake the demons. If it weren't winter, I would go fishing, or at least think about fishing; that usually gets rid of my heebie-jeebies. But it's deep winter here, even if it doesn't feel like it, and there's nowhere to go, so tonight I'm left to sit here with death on my shoulder.

Maybe it's because I'm feeling particularly maudlin tonight, or maybe because I feel like I owe whatever readers are here (none, most likely) an explanation, but tonight I'm thinking back to how I became a fan of horse racing; tonight I'm thinking back to a night in the spring of 1998, and to my racetrack mentor, Jack Corso.

I moved to Los Angeles in November of 1997 because it seemed like the stupidest thing I could do. I looked for work, and bounced around a few places, until in March of the following year I talked my way into a job as a caddie at Wilshire Country Club, in Hancock Park. Needless to say, the caddie yard was filled with gamblers, and I think learned the layout of the turf course at Hollywood Park before I learned the sequence of holes.

All through that spring, Corso patiently took me to the track and taught me how things work there. To many people, I suppose, his efforts were at best corrupting, and at worst self-serving, but I think that I would have ended up at the racetrack anyway, and being with Corso - he was a racetrack lifer - shortened my learning curve considerably.

The night that I remember so vividly - to quote John Kerry, it's "seared in my memory" - was in May of 1998. Corso had patiently instructed me on the heiroglyphics of the Racing Form, to the point where I felt that making a bet was not a stab in the dark. It was a Friday night at Hollywood Park - how I miss, sitting here on a Tuesday night in Philadelphia, those Friday night cards at Hollywood Park - and I had cautiously placed $5 win bets on the first six races without cashing a ticket.

I had gone to the track with $150, and after buying beers and hot dogs, and paying for the losing tickets, I was down to about $60. The 7th race was a turf sprint, 5 1/2 furlongs on the sod, and I figured that if I was going to go broke at the racetrack, I might as well do go down in flames. I took a look at the form, decided that I liked the 3, who was 20-1.

I didn't say anything to Corso; I walked to the window, bet $20 to win and to place on the 3, and put the rest of my money - enough to get me home, I figured - into my pocket. We walked out onto the sloped blacktop in the grandstand of Hollywood Park. Corso was lighting a cigarette when he looked at me and said, "You bet anything in this race, Chrissy?" I told him what I had done - the 3 horse was now 19-1 - and he looked at me and shrugged.

"Jack," I said, "how much are you down tonight?"

"A hundred and a half."

"I'll tell you what, Jack. If the three wins this race, I'll get you back to even."

"Honest?"

"Sure."

"Come on the three!'

We stood there and watched as the three, Cuvee Brut - I'll never forget that name - shot to an early lead and held on to win. I still remember jumping up and down with Corso that night, hugging each other as Cuvee Brut hit the line first; I hope that someday I'll feel a sense of joy that pure. With horse racing, anyway.

Cuvee Brut paid $41.20 to win and $17.60 to place. My $40 ticket was worth almost $600.

I went to the window and cashed - as I look back on it now, I can see Corso's face watching me, and it's the face of a proud father - and we went back to our seats. I peeled off $150 worth of bills and laid them on the table. He looked at me funny. I told him that I meant what I said; that the dough was his. He took it, and... well, after that we went and played the last few races at Los Alamitos. We had a few more beers. And I was hooked on this great game.

There's No Sunshine in Arcadia (or in Hallandale Beach)

Well, they took entries for the Sunshine Millions last week, and I'll admit that it was with a ghoulish sense of glee that I went to the "Televised Horse Racing" section of the Daily Racing Form's website and realized that this year the contest between Florida-Breds and California-Breds wouldn't be on NBC. I guess that as a fan of racing, I should rue the loss of any racing on network TV; it seems that in the very near future the only race that will be there is the Kentucky Derby. But when I clicked on the link, and saw that they were going to be on HRTV (who gets that channel, by the way?), it made me feel that something that was inevitable had happened.

Let me stipulate here that I do not detest the Sunshine Millions; while I think they are a bogus event, and a profligate waste of precious purse money, I think they were at least a stab for something worthwhile, and that in creating them, Magna was trying to do the right thing - to create an event that would bring casual fans both to the racetrack and in front of the televison.

No, my problem with the Sunshine Millions is more with the way it is a microcosm of the way that Magna operates, of how it almost invariably gets wrong what it tries to do. Let's face it, friends: as a racetrack owner, Frank Stronach has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. When he started buying racetracks, I'll admit that I - along with countless other diehard fans of racing - were very excited; here, we thought, was a renegade who would shake up the poisonously complacent mindset of those who ran our great sport, and save us from our slow drift toward irrelevance. He was new blood, and his background as an industrial titan and greatly successful thoroughbred breeder could only help. Oh, what heady days they were....

Now, of course, the bitter fruits of Stronach's ill-fated stewardship are evident to anyone with anything more than a passing interest in racing. Let's take a look at some of the things that Magna has wrought:

- In a time when TVG has made great inroads, and has enabled most semi-serious fans to subscribe to an all-racing channel, Santa Anita and Gulfstream, the two premier winter meetings, are unavailable to most fans.

- Gulfstream's renovations is a disaster. Stronach has managed to do the impossible: create a new facility that has alienated diehard fans, and which will fail to bring any new fans to the track

- The state of Maryland racing is a joke. It may be unfair to blame this on Magna - Maryland racing had myriad problems before they got involved - but Stronach is still the baker left holding a lousy cake

There are many more examples, but time prevents me from cataloging them. I miss Santa Anita, but I'll find a way to make it until Hollywood opens...

More on this later. Cheers.

January 19, 2006

Well, now that I've had eight months to handicap those races....

Actually, I"ve been dodging the burden of keeping a blog, even about a sport I love as much as racing, because of the time commitment it requires. Maybe it's a result of how much I love this great sport, but I didn't want to do a half-ass version of a racing blog; I wanted to wait until I could give the subject the intensity and effort it deserves. It is, after all, the greatest sport in the world, and I'd rather save my comments than give a blog less than my best. Coupled with the effort it takes to satisfactorily handicap races and follow the news, and to go to work and keep up with the real world.... well, the blog took a back seat to all that. Hopefully I'll be able to make up for lost time.

I've seen a few blogs, and even posted on one (I think it's the best racing blog out there; please go to Jessica Chapel's Railbird blog at http://www.jessicachapel.com), but now that I'm starting my own, I guess I should give an overview of what this blog is going to be.

My primary focus on this blog will be my greatest passion, handicapping thoroughbred races (since I moved to the east coast from California, fishing for striped bass has become a rival, but for now it remains secondary). Faithful handicapping requires a commitment to following the news, and the goings on of the racing world will be followed here as well, at least those I feel worthy of commenting on. I plan on avoiding posting links to news stories, as readers of this blog (if any) will either have already read about the news I'm talking about, or will know where to go to read about it. And a corollary of following the news, I think, is a preoccupation with the sport's two great annual bookends -- the Triple Crown and the Breeders' Cup -- and the goings on that lead up to them.

The big news story in racing the last few days is the retirement of Jerry Bailey. I wish Bailey the best, of course, and I'm glad to see him, as he put it, leave the sport "in one piece" -- too many riders leave involuntarily. But his retirement, and the earlier retirement of three riders who were arguably as good as him -- Pat Day, Chris McCarron, and Laffit Pincay -- leads me to thinking about where jockeys belong in the mind of a handicapper.

I will start by saying that I am not a jockey hater. I do not begrudge these gentlemen their success; on the contrary, I root for almost all of them. Let's face it: it's a difficult way to make a living. And that is without having to make weight.

But it is nevertheless true that jockeys are the most overrated factor in racing, especially among the less sophisticated of our handicapping brethren. While there probably isn't a horseplayer alive who hasn't placed a bet because of a jockey -- I'll admit to placing a $2 win flyer on this hopeless longshot, because he's beng ridden by a jockey with a hot hand -- in my handicapping, while I look at who's riding, it is almost never that the jockey is the basis of a wager.

And I thnk that this is because the nature of the jockey's job -- and this may be what makes their job so difficult -- is that they have much more to lose than to win. It's been said enough times that a jockey cannot make a horse run faster, and it is true; it is also, by logical extrapolation, that it is possible for a jockey to make a horse run much worse than he is capable.

This is why, in my handicapping, that I pay serious attention to a jockey's competence, but once they have met my basic standard, I turn my attention to the attributes to the runner, and pay little mind to who's riding.

I cut my handicapping teeth in the late 1990's in Southern California, and I will admit that it's perhaps because of the surfeit of riding talent that was in residence there at the time that I feel this way. Seeing that the riders in a given race were Solis, McCarron, Pincay, Desormeaux, Delahoussey, and Stevens -- and even underrated riders like Omar Berrio and Martin Pedroza -- made it easy for me to disregard the relative merits of individual jockeys. But the point remains the same: give me a basically competent rider on the best horse, and I'll take it. I even learned to appreciate the opportunities when the best horse was ridden by an underrated jockey - someone like Goncalino Almeida or Danny Sorenson - and I'll take it. Every time. Even today, and even with a rider like Jerry Bailey.

And, to repeat, this is not to take anything away from the best riders. When I handicap, I normally don't look at the jockey until I've assessed the relative merits of each horse; I find who I like, and see if the rider is a reason to get off that horse. And when I find the horse I like the most, and I discover it is ridden by someone like Jerry Bailey, it makes me feel more secure in my selection. It also makes me realize that I'm going to get a shorter price, but that's an issue for another time...

I was at Santa Anita Park the day Laffit Pincay took a spill in his last ride. I even had a $10 win bet on his mount in that race; I don't think I'll ever forget that the horse's name was Trampus Too. I'm glad to see that Jerry Bailey is leaving our great game healthy and rich. But I don't think his departure is going to change how I approach the game.

This great sport, after all, is bigger than all of us. And I hope it stays that way.