Feeling Insecure
Nick Kling on the closing of the detention barn:
In an attempt to sway bettors in their favor, barn opponents alleged it had no deterrent effect. However, that belies several examples of success from the security barn.
The most glaring was the case of a trainer known for winning at a high percentage at every venue. The instant the security barn opened this person’s New York success fell off the table. The stable continued to win 25 percent everywhere else, less than half that in New York.
Coincidence?
In the past four years, the New York entries from this barn have been fewer than half the number from the final five months of 2005…. This outfit has had ZERO New York starters in 2010.
7/19/10 Addendum/Edit: Trainer Rick Dutrow, one of the reasons for the detention barn? “They didn’t trust me, man.” (Not the case, says Hayward.)
Returning Champions
Noting that Kelso went to post as the favorite in four out of five of his returns as reigning Horse of the Year, commenter o_crunk remarked:
It makes me wonder if returning champions who go off favored in their return beat the average win percentage of favorites?
It turns out that, yes, favored returning champions do beat the average.
Champions from 1971-2008 (excluding steeplechase horses) made 210 first starts back the year after being honored, going to post favored in 177 of those races (84%) and winning 105 times (59%), a rate well above the standard 33.3% (or the 2009 average of 36.6%) As usual, the public is astute: All returning champions averaged odds of .97-1, but favored returning champions averaged odds of .68-1. Betting $2 to win on each favored champion would have returned $321.10 $285 to $354 wagered.
(View the spreadsheet/download the spreadsheet.)
A few observations based on quick analysis:
Thirty-nine champions returned in ALW/AOC company, winning 26 (66%) of those races. No champion not favored — with the exception of 2008 juvenile champion Midshipman, returning in a 2009 Belmont AOC — won at this level.
Fifty-two champions returned in ungraded stakes, winning 30 (57%) at average odds of .84-1. Only two, out of five, not favored won, but betting $2 to win on those five would have returned $13.20 to $10 wagered.
Most champions returned in graded stakes, winning 49 (41%) of 119 starts. Of the 98 that were favored, 44 won (45%) at average odds of .80-1.
Including Rachel Alexandra, returning Horses of the Year since 1971 (see chart below) made 20 starts. Favored in 19 races, they won 15 (79%) at average odds of .40-1. Betting only favored HOTYs would have returned $41.40* for $38.
*Only with a little luck would a player be on the plus side. John Henry, the highest-priced favored HOTY, finished second in the 1982 Santa Anita Handicap and was bumped to first by the disqualification of Perrault. If the results had stood, favored come-back HOTYs would have won 14 (74%) out of 19 starts and returned $36.80 for $38.
Links for 2010-03-11
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"Speaking on condition of anonymity, highly placed industry sources are telling HRI there is no way Monmouth Park can reasonably expect to double its handle, something it would need to do to remain viable, given a purse structure that will distribute an average $1-million daily." As long as New Jersey is experimenting, why not court bettors as aggressively as connections? Slash takeout, offer free data, target whales.
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A bit of candor: "If this is the death for the small horsemen, it’s because he doesn’t have the kind of horse that America wants to bet on."
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"The goal is simple: to replicate the company's smashing success in the financial world, where the $1,500-a-month Bloomberg terminals are in many ways the lifeblood of the industry, into the sports world. Bloomberg is starting with baseball. The company has just launched its fantasy product, which costs $31.95 for the year." Watching with interest …
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More details from the December 2009 deal announcement: "For the MLBAM-Bloomberg product being sold to MLB teams, Bloomberg will take MLBAM’s real-time statistical feed from every game, as well as location-based data already being developed in partnership with Sportvision, and apply an almost limitless amount of analytical tools." Neat! Visuals (via).
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"Here’s my point: businesses don’t get to pick the timetable for when their preferred model takes a permanent dirt nap. It’s insane to me that these businesses’ fans see this so much more clearly than their actual stakeholders do. The fans want desperately to see these places stay alive, and many … pay tons of actual cash … to support that."
Another Saratoga First
Congratulations to Linda Rice on securing the 2009 Saratoga training title with 20 winners, one more than runner-up and six-time title holder Todd Pletcher, with one race remaining in the meet. The honor is a first for the conditioner, who started her stable in 1987 and currently has 50 horses, and for racing history — Rice is the first woman to win a training title at Saratoga or, it’s believed, at any major thoroughbred track.
Final numbers below:
A couple things to note about the stats, not least how well Rice did with a smaller barn largely filled with NY-bred turf horses. She sent out slightly more than half as many starters as Pletcher and yet still scored a win percentage almost twice as high, and did so with all of her wins coming in races carded for the grass. And while Pletcher placed and showed 28 and 20 times, Rice did so four and eight times — her stock was well spotted and ready, for the most part. As for money, Pletcher earned considerably more, racking up purses totaling $1,403,043 (through September 6) compared to $784,779 for Rice, but on average, each Rice starter earned $11,053 compared to $10,961 for each Pletcher starter. Rice was also good to bettors, with an ROI of $2.84 and a median price of $7.20; Pletcher delivered a mere $1.39 and $6.70.
“Maybe if some people notice that I can make my horses effective with what I have, maybe I’ll get the opportunity to train better horses,” said Rice last week. Here’s hoping that after what she’s achieved this summer, and more than proving her abilities, the trainer gets the opportunity she seeks.
Mine That Bump
Kentucky Derby 2009 bump chart, from Charts and Graphs:
Created with ggplot2 for R. More from Learning R on its construction.
Mine That Bird’s rail dash looks no less improbable graphed, while Pioneerof the Nile’s even run looks better. Too bad there’s no Trakus data, which would make for a busier, but surely richer and more revealing, chart.
Trivia
Noticed while skimming the Derby PPs, updating the historical criteria chart …
- Since 2002, every Derby winner has worked a bullet in their penultimate or final workout; since 1998, eight of 11 winners have done so. (Kennedy, helpfully, has real stats on this.) This year, six starters have bullet works: Friesan Fire, Regal Ransom, I Want Revenge, Atomic Rain, Dunkirk, and Summer Bird. The last time Friesan Fire worked a bullet was before winning the Louisiana Derby; Dunkirk has worked three straight bullets since the Florida Derby. The anti-bullet? Pioneerof the Nile: In his four works at Santa Anita listed on the pps, every one was the fastest or second-fastest at the distance. His two works at Churchill were fourth and eleventh, both at five furlongs.
- The game of musical jockeys continued through Tuesday, ending with 10 rider changes — seven of those new pairings: Chocolate Candy (Mike Smith), Desert Party (Ramon Dominguez), General Quarters (Julien Leparoux), Mine That Bird (Calvin Borel), Mr. Hot Stuff (John Velazquez), Nowhere to Hide (Shaun Bridgmohan), Flying Private (Robby Albarado). That’s the most since 2003, when six horses, all longshots, went to the post with new riders. Between 2003-2008, 22 horses, none at final odds of less than 10-1, started with new riders on Derby day. Of those, none won, and only two — Bluegrass Cat, second in 2006, and Imperialism, third in 2004 — finished in the money.
Locked Up
Ray Paulick has posted a piece this morning on the possible expansion of the Jockey Club into the tote business that includes a bit on Equibase and its practice of locking all data up behind a paywall, unlike most major sports. “It’s short-term thinking,” says an executive quoted by Paulick. “If our objective in racing is for the horseplayers to win, we should do everything we can to help him, and increase the churn. That’s where the revenue for our business should come from, not from the statistics the horseplayer needs.” Of course, bloggers have been exploring this issue for some time. Previously on Railbird …
From a post on June 5, 2008:
The Supreme Court squashed Major League Baseball’s attempt to maintain exclusive control of player statistics, turning down its appeal of an Eighth Circuit Court ruling that allowed fantasy baseball leagues to use the data without paying a licensing fee. “The information used in … fantasy baseball games is all readily available in the public domain,” said the appeals court, “and it would be strange law that a person would not have a First Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone.” Well, this is interesting … and most definitely relevant to the industry. Applied to racing, this ruling could be interpreted to mean that almost all data and statistics in the past performances and results charts are in the public domain (which makes it ridiculous that Equibase buries historical charts behind a paywall), but not presentation of the data or statistics [so no straight re-posting of PDF charts], or analysis derived using proprietary methods (such as speed figures).
CBSSports.com responded to the Supreme Court’s decision by launching a new site that makes available data for baseball, as well as football, basketball, hockey, and auto racing. I’d love to see a similar initiative in racing. As baseball stats wizard Bill James said,
People take information and build knowledge. When you give them new information they will create new knowledge, absolutely and without question.
Free data and historical stats, that’s the way to build the fan base.
And here’s a commenter responding to another post from September 9, 2008:
I feel silly declaring any facet the BIG problem, considering the state of the industry these days, but o_crunk brings up an issue that I think has become a major drag on racing, and that’s all the data and information and video tied up by exclusives and hidden behind paywalls. It’s tough to market this game when you force players to jump through endless hoops to get the most basic information and watch races — this is especially so when we talk about marketing racing to gamblers, and focusing more on the game. Racing can’t hold on to the people who might be the most interested if, after hooking their attention and enticing them with promises of easy wagering, intellectual stimulation, and friendly competition, the industry has to tell people this ADW carries these tracks and another those tracks, and you can watch live streaming video, but only if you have a wagering account and you wager a certain amount, and you can’t find simple historical data or get more than the most basic entries and results information without paying and paying and paying again. It’s folly, when we’ve come to a point technology-wise where people expect to go to Google and find whatever they want — or download mobile apps that give them all the game information they can handle for their favorite team or sport.
“If you look back to 1990 and see what information was available and how it was made available, we’ve accomplished a lot,” Equibase president Hank Zeitlen tells Paulick, and that might be true — but it’s not enough.
About
Jessica Chapel is a writer and editor living in Cambridge, MA. Railbird v1 was a thoroughbred racing blog that ran 2004-2008; Railbird v2 is a broader collection of notes and links, but still (mostly) about the horses. More ›
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