It's all good
Now, that's horse racing: Big-time, perfectly bred thoroughbreds have just brought the small to middle-sized track style of running, done oftentimes by claiming horses, to the nation's attention.
It puts the ping back in handicapping.
Every once in a while you find a horse that couldn't lose if it stopped to shake the mud off its ears, and a horse that couldn't run anything but second if it forgot to break, in a short field full of "others," and still the exacta pays more than five to one, more than ten bucks.
These days, most days, any days, a five hundred percent return on investment is considered to be just great.
Yet there went Rachel Alexandra, on supersonic cruise control, and there followed Summer Bird on mop-up duty; and there on the board was the exacta price of $10.40.
I guess you could have bet something else; had you been reeling drunk, completely incompetent, or had you hit the wrong numbers on a wagering machine. And perhaps there could have been a manner in which you could have made a five hundred and ten percent return on investment over the weekend. But on the whole, the best horse in the world figured pretty solidly at Monmouth in the mud verses a Greek Chorus; and the Belmont winner was not a risky play for second.
Races like this happen on a regular basis in the sticks or in the heartland.
I have been pushing the premise that handicapping is usually easier out among us in the bread basket, bread in the case of horse racing standing for profit. Had the Rachel Alexandra-Summer Bird trot-over taken place farther from the coast, the exacta would have paid $16. Here's why. We trust certain things. We believe that every so often dreams come true. Sometimes there are only a couple or three ways a horse race can transpire. If you follow smaller track horse racing, sometimes you can predict what kind of race that will pop up on the card one fine evening. And many races are like stencils, in that with short fields, speed will do this, and stuffed saddle cloths from overrated tracks will do that, and if repeated history is any indicator, you should win a little something.
So while 12 of them are breaking from the gate at Del Mar, with four of them fighting hard for the lead, and four different ones then swooping forward on the turn, with five or six having a legitimate chance to win halfway down the stretch, races similar to Rachel Alexandra's most recent are being run at tracks in various necks of the woods, races easier to handicap than the Haskell, races that pay even more.
Here's one. The other evening at a Midwestern-type track, rain made mush of the turf course and washed all races to the soupy dirt. There were more scratches than reservations confirmed. In one race, four of them went to the post, f-o-u-r, only one with speed, a habitual loser from a big track was at even money, one that couldn't outrun me, and another with tactical speed. When running virtually by yourself, tactical speed isn't always a factor, is it. The one with the only hint of speed didn't stop in the water, and won by, oh, half a block. Have you noticed in ridiculously short fields that favorites seldom run 1-2? I noticed for you. The Exacta in this four-horse field won by the only speed, and followed by the one who usually ran well enough to sucker in bettors the next time out, paid $20-something.
Sometimes at races run on seldom seen stretches, bias or a trend dictates the $50 horse looks better than a 2-1 horse.
If you enjoyed making 5-1 on Rachel Alexandra and Summer Bird, you'll fall in love with the possibilities that jump off the screen from middle-America or a regular basis.
To successfully play tracks off the national TV rotation, you will need to become comfortable with the following.
Incompetence
Sometimes you will see rides that defy description, logic, maybe even gravity, riders that might just slide off a mount mid-race for no apparent reason; or seek a horse with whom to get in trouble.
The impossible
Horses that have run last by a total of 104 lengths in their most recent eight races run second or third at odds of 60-1 all the time.
There's no explaining it, there's no justifying it, it's like a tariff you must pay in order to get access to the occasional $25 exacta in a four-horse field, with one of the four appearing lost.
Bandages
You get used to them.
Front wraps off, it's an angle claimer-players know.
Gate stuff
Sometimes it's like a rugby scrum back there.
Some gate crews are not wardrobe coordinated.
Though you'd think they'd at least have to watch a training film, certain members of gate crews seem seriously frightened of horses.
Photos
Ho-hum, another dead heat.
Horses on the lead in inexpensive races can almost come to complete stops at the finish, giving rise to numerous tight finishes with results incomprehensible to the sober eye.
The winners from the races taking place out in space might not be as pretty as Rachel Alexandra; but the pictures on the money are.
Write to Jay at jaycronley@yahoo.com.
