Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Picking the horse that can't win
By Jay Cronley
Special to ESPN.com
Anybody who can read the Racing Form can occasionally find a horse that can win.
A lot of help is available. Experts pick winners for you. Fine minds gone slightly astray provide speed figures that appear in bold print.
What's hard is finding the Internal Revenue Service horse, the big winner that has you filling out tax forms on a dollar bet. What's hard is finding the horse that can't win.
Horses that can't win do win every day of the week.
A horse that can't win has no recent form, and, in a majority of the cases, no past form.
Here's a trouble line that can be difficult for the average horse player to bet into: Left in a van. But sometimes it's a prelude to collecting. The exact trouble notation is I believe: Vanned off. But vanned isn't quite a word. We here at the website are all for a decent use of the language. Instead of learning a new word each week, sometimes it is more practical to drop from the vocabulary a word that isn't really a word.
A parallel universe in horse racing is if you can't find a winner, at least avoid a loser.
Here are some reasons why horses that can't win do win at odds of 40-1 or more.
Improved health.
Last week, we talked about winning moves unique to small or medium-sized race tracks.
Racing from the veterinarian's office is one such angle.
At certain meets, a horse can leave in a van come back at the head of a parade, don't ask me how.
I have noticed that horses returning to race the last week of a meet after an extremely long layoff sometimes roll big numbers. Why do horses that can't win oftentimes win the last week of a meet? Perhaps it has something to do with getting out of town.
Trainer change.
Trainer figures can be as helpful as speed figures.
Certain trainers are so terrible at what they try to do, a change to somebody competent can be worth ten lengths.
Chicanery.
When a connection is caught breaking the rules, purse money is withheld. But they probably made triple the purse at the windows. Tickets are coded. Cheaters should have to refund bets taken under false pretenses. Then few would cheat.
At least when somebody tries to pull something at the races, the bets are run through the windows and become public knowledge. This is in marked contrast to other forms of wickedness like Internet betting on college football games where the starting quarterback can sit in his dorm room and bet a few hundred each week without anybody knowing.
Off-shore or mid-air Internet gambling is unregulated.
Name something scarier.
Turf breeding.
I was at the simulcast building last week looking at a turf race over a route of intermittent sod at Remington Park in Oklahoma City. Picking a winner seemed highly unlikely. Competitive form was something like third in a recent dirt sprint.
The question, "Who is being bet that doesn't deserve to be bet?" would produce the following answer.
"All of them."
This particular course does not remind you of the 18th fairway at Augusta.
But it's greener than not, thus qualifying as grass action.
A friend of mine pointed to the sire of one of the horses and said that was turf breeding and went to bet it.
Going by recent form, it looked more like pet breeding.
The odds on this horse were 44-1.
That meant somebody liked it a little.
It was one of those races that left second place in doubt, not because it was too close too call, but instead because the winner was alone on the television screen.
Pretty soon, the rest of them showed and placed.
The Exacta with the horse with turf breeding on top was in the upper fours, the Trifecta right at a thousand bucks.
Turf breeding can put up big numbers on maiden races and the first time on the grass.
It is real and comes from certain physical attributes more suitable for dealing with blades than clods, the shape and size of a foot, for example, according to my good, dear, thoughtful and generous friend.
