JC / Railbird

Hello Race Fans

He Was the Best

I’m heading up to Saratoga for the Whitney Handicap, which is a Breeders’ Cup Classic Challenge race and a stakes I best remember for 2006, the year Invasor won by digging in and outlasting Sun King by a nose. There is no Invasor in this year’s field, but the winner will get a guaranteed spot in this fall’s Classic, a race Invasor also won in 2006 at awesome odds of 7-1. If I’m missing, just a little, a horse retired more than four years ago, it’s probably because I recently wrote a profile of Invasor for Hello Race Fans, which includes several replays from his career, including — of course! — the Whitney.

Posted in Racing on August 5, 2011 / Tagged Breeders' Cup, Hello Race Fans, Invasor, Saratoga, Whitney Handicap

Friday Notes

It’s mid-February, the weekend of Sam and Bob, the weekend Derby preps get serious. Forgive the plug, but if you’re looking for analysis of Kentucky Derby and Oaks preps this spring, consider signing up for the weekly Hello Race Fans! Derby Prep Alert, which this week covers the Sam F. Davis at Tampa, the Robert B. Lewis at Santa Anita, and El Camino Real at Golden Gate. Subscribers last week were tipped off to Zazu’s upset potential in the Las Virgenes.

I’ve been a little preoccupied this week (to readers who are not Suffolk Downs fans, my thanks for sticking around through what’s been a series of minutiae-filled posts about a track on the ropes), and haven’t done much more than glance at the entries for the preps — enough to notice that Jaycito isn’t in the Lewis, a race in which Tapizar seems a solid favorite — and to skim Jeremy Plonk’s exhaustive Countdown to the Crown column, which mentions a few allowance races that bear watching for Derby prospects. [Jaycito will start in the San Vicente on February 20. “He’s ready to go,” said trainer Bob Baffert.]

Suffolk certainly isn’t the only racetrack struggling, and that it’s my local track isn’t all that makes the dispute with the New England horsemen over the 2011 meet purses, days, and simulcasting split so fascinating to me — it’s also that what’s happening here is of a piece with what’s happening in California, where annual handle is down and horseplayers are revolting. It’s all part of the Great American Racing Contraction, a reapportionment of power and money that isn’t going to leave a track, horseman, or horseplayer untouched.

Posted in Racing on February 11, 2011 / Tagged California, Derby Preps, Derby Prospects, Hello Race Fans, Jaycito, Tapizar

Looking for a Price

Mike Maloney on how he plays superfectas:

I’ll structure bets with my key horses in third and fourth. There’s probably as much probability in the third and fourth spots as in the first and second. If you’re lucky enough where you get a price horse to win along with a key horse for third and fourth that is also a price — and a lot of them are — you’ve got a great chance to cash a monster ticket. Sometimes a dime super can pay into the thousands.

That’s from an interview with the noted big bettor in last fall’s Horseplayer Magazine, available as a PDF via HANA. Looking past the top two for wagering value is also an approach I enjoy, as I wrote on Hello Race Fans last year.

Posted in Racing on January 14, 2011 / Tagged Betting, Handicapping, Hello Race Fans, Horseplayers, Mike Maloney, Superfectas