Chad is the leading trainer at the current Saratoga meet. He's running away it, and will probably win by more lengths than what Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by. But pretty much, Chad wins wherever he shows up.
There is no better example of Chad's winning ways than the results yesterday from Arlington Park, where they ran the Arlington Million, the first race to offer a million dollar purse, started in 1981. It is a Grade I race, on the turf, for three-year-olds and up. Winning a Grade I race always boosts a horse's breeding value.
I had an uncle who came from the Chicago area who back-in-day told me that jockey Willie Shoemaker and Bill Hartack used to win a day's races so often that they nearly split the card between them. The Ortiz brothers, Irad and Jose nearly do the same thing in New York.
In horse racing, the distribution of the purse money generally goes 60% to the winner, 20% for second, and various smaller percentages, sometimes giving something all the way down to even the last place finisher. Horses, trainers, jockeys and owners win races. Chad Brown nearly wins the entire purse.
Yesterday at Arlington Chad's horses ran 1-2-3 in the Beverly D, a Grade I $600,000 turf race for fillies and mares run at a mile and three-sixteenths. He did this for three different ownership groups. Chad's horses ran 1-2 in the feature, the Arlington Million, a race he has now won a record five times. There are times after the results are posted that you just want to scream at the 39-year-old guy from Mechanicville, NY, "Chad, let someone else win for a while, will you."
Anytime Chad is interviewed in the winner's circle he is always humble. He always reminds the interviewer of all the people on his team that work hard to make a horse ready for competition. And if you know anything about the backstretch, there are a good number of workers at various levels that work with the thoroughbreds, with the trainer having ultimate oversight of everything.
Chad also always mentions his mentor Bobby Frankel, the Hall of Fame trainer Chad worked under and from whom he learned a lot. Frankel has passed away, but he himself learned from Buddy Jacobson, a leading trainer on the NYRA circuit in the early 60s, a magician with claimers, who eventually murdered his ex-girl friend's boyfriend, was convicted, and died in prison.
Jacobson himself was the nephew of Hirsch Jacobs, a legendary Hall of Fame trainer who trained Stymie and was at his heyday in the 30s, 40s and 50s, often leading the nation in wins.. There is a good deal of training wisdom that has flowed down to Chad Brown.
Into this enters Nick Luck, the NBC racing sportscaster who is decidedly British. Sarah Lyall, an America reporter for the NYT who lived in England for so long she became keenly aware of the difference between the common language separated by an ocean, tells us in her book "The Anglo Files"..."Englishman, with their thrilling accents, rumbled hair and ability to make even pointless banalities sound like brilliant repartee" can make a woman weak at the knees. (She admits she married one.)
Nick Luck would have to fit this description. In June he hosted five days of racing from Ascot, England, dressed in the required top hat and morning coat, on the air for a solid four hours starting in the morning. And while he's not really spouting banalities, he is enunciating so many phrases with such a soupçon of insouciance that you would gladly follow him through fire.
Consider he closes the telecast on Saturday by telling us "...on a day that Chad left them all hanging..."
Did he just say that? A Britisher, 18 years! after the 2000 Presidential election that needed a Supreme Court ruling to decide who got Florida's electoral votes after so many chads were left hanging between Al Gore's name and George Bush's name on the paper ballots?
Its cleverness is only exceeded by the late sportswriter Dick Schaap telling a television audience in 1973 that Riva Ridge and Secretariat were the most famous stablemates since Mary and Joseph. (Boy, did Dick ever get in trouble for that one!)
I Tweeted Mr. Luck yesterday and asked: How long have you been waiting to say "Chad leaves them hanging." Does anyone else know what you said, 18 years after chads were hanging in the 2000 Presidential election? And you're not American."
Mr. Nick kindly replied: "Glad you're with me."
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I certainly don't know everything, but you might have to hold a seance and go back in time and ask long-buried horseplayers if they can call recall anything that matches this one.
Since we're talking about turf races, something happened last Wednesday at Saratoga that I have never heard of in all my 50 years of following racing. The starting gate for the 5th race was placed in the wrong spot, turning the scheduled one and an sixteenth race into a mile and an eighth affair on the Mellon turf course.
I have heard of there being instances at non-NYRA tracks where they were not able to get the starting gate out of the way before the horses completed the circuit. Horses crashing into a starting gate is not something anyone wants to have happen. I know this happened at least once at Gulfstream and once at Finger Lakes I believe. The outriders were able to flag the horses and jockeys down before anyone got too close to closing in on the starting gate they were unable to move because of a stalled tractor. That was Oh Dear for the John Deere.
I remember once they started a race at a NYRA track with one horse left to load. Think of the surprised jockey who was trying to get to the gate only to have everyone take off on them. They don't shoot the starter's gun twice and bring the field back like in track. The race goes off and the horse left at the post is considered a non-starter. Accommodations are made for wagering, because every race these days is part of a multi-leg sequence, even Daily Doubles.
But putting the gate in the wrong position is a new one. Considering that turf races can have multiple starting points on the ovals for the same distance depending on where they set the rail, the fact that this hasn't happened before is a testament to the detail that is taken to ensure consistency.
The rail is the white fencing that is sometimes in place to help distribute the wear on the turf courses. If a rail is set at sat 18 feet from the inside circumference—generally the hedge—then it stands to reason that a starting point has to be determined to account for the desired distance. All races end at the finish line, but they start at various points. A different starting point for the same distance will be needed on a day when the rail may be set at 18 feet out from the hedge vs. a day the rail is set at say 27 out from the hedge. Saturday's Arlington Million had the rail set at an astounding 62 feet.
(The rails are portable, flexible, and are secured into the ground by the long spikes pictured above.)
The turf races at Belmont in the week prior to the Saturday of this year's Belmont Stakes—when several top turf races were scheduled—were run on turf courses where the rail was set at 27 feet. This preserved the inner turf, so that on Belmont Saturday there were no rail settings. Races were run from the hedges as the inside, on fresh ground that hadn't been run on lately. They don't run tractors over the turf to groom it, like the dirt surfaces.
Les (Mr. Pace), our eminent mentor would often tell us before the races started that "the rail has been scrapped." This meant that they've done something to the track to enhance speed horses. It wasn't until 1985 when I ventured to the top of the stretch to take photos of the horses as they hit the turn, that I realized the track is banked. I would imagine if there was scrapping that perhaps the bank has been enhanced—like adding height to the pitcher's mound.
We never knew how Les came across this information, but he held more information in his head than a hard drive. I remember seeing a chart on the main floor in our salad days, perhaps at Belmont, or maybe Aqueduct, that was a diagram of what the track superintendent and his crew have done to the track, If this lead you to believe there was "scrapping" then this might be where Les got his information. Or, unnamed sources.
I don't know if there is such a chart displayed these days. The NYRA online information board will tell you the expected track condition, and if the track has been sealed or harrowed. I have no idea if harrowing is scrapping the rail. Les has left us. We need a seance.
The misplacement of the starting gate was apparent to no one before the race was run. Not the jockeys, not the starting gate crew which works in the moments between races to position the starting gate, not the stewards, to probably even the most eagle-eyed fan in the stands. If there was an eagle-eyed fan, without a hotline to the men upstairs, whatever they were aware of stayed with them.
I must admit I've been late to factor in rail placements with my handicapping, and I've really never been able to draw a definitive reaction to their distances. Different placements change the shape of the turns, which may be a factor in the way a horse handles the turns.
When the fractional times started to come in for the race, 29.69, 53.50, 1:19.50 is was becoming apparent something was wrong. No level of horse on a NYRA track runs that slow through the quarter, half and 6 furlong splits. I've been going to the races so long I remember there were no fractional times for turf races; there were no telemeters set up to capture any splits for anything other than dirt races and finishes. It's a brave new world out there.
So consider that. the placement of the timing devices also has to be adjusted depending on where the race starts for turf races, and those placements will vary depending on where he rail is placed, or not placed. Frankly, I do not know exactly how they arrive at the fractional splits, and who might be responsible for placing them in the right spot for turf races.
With a race starting further back than desired, and the timing devices set up for a mile and a sixteenth race, the splits would naturally register more elapsed time. Unfortunately, by now the race has started, is in the books, but at the wrong desired distance.
The Daily Racing Form chart is the Congressional Record of all that goes on in a race. A person who can read a chart can recreate the race in their mind. There are numerical designations that tell the informed exactly where a horse was at every "call." and where they were in relation to those in front of them, and those behind them. There is also a running narrative that describes the movements and the ease or difficulties the horses have had running the race. Nettlesome events like getting bumped, hitting the starting gate at the break, stumbling at the start, are duly noted; Claims of foul are noted.
Odds, breeding, ownership, jockey, trainer, condition of the track, time of day, rail placements if turf, eligibility conditions that were met to enter the race, purse distribution, how weights were assigned, mutuel pool summaries, mutuel payouts, who might have been entered but was scratched, and who might have been claimed and who their new owner is if the race was a claiming race and the horse was entered for a "tag," are all part of the information found on a chart. It is indispensable knowledge when handicapping.
Anything unusual that happened during the race ,like a claim of foul is noted in uppercase letters at the bottom of the narrative. There is plenty of uppercase letters for the fifth race at Saratoga on August 8, 2018:
THIS RACE WAS SCHEDULED FOR ONE MILE AND ONE SIXTEENTH BUT WAS RUN AT ONE MILE AND ONE FURLONG [ONE EIGHTH OF A MILE] DUE TO THE GATE BEING PLACED IN THE WRONG LOCATION. FRACTIONAL AND FINAL TIMES ARE UNAVAILABLE.
To put it bluntly, when shit happens, the management tries to alert the bettor that something happened. I don't know if there was any announcement made after the race. The race was declared official, and no declaration of the race being declared a non-betting race, and therefore necessitating refunds, was made. It might have been considered too late to declare a race as such if too much time elapsed from the completion of the race and the realization that something had seriously gone wrong with the gate placement.
To declare a race a non-betting race after say even 10 minutes had elapsed from its completion might have set off a stampede for Scotch tape at Staples to try and put those torn up tickets back together. Not everyone bets online where transactions can just be reversed. My guess is something like this occurred to the powers that be. Destroyed tickets are never cashed, and revert to the state as abandoned property each March 31. Any time-delayed declaration of a race as a non-betting race might have been seen as a grab for even more money than is naturally taken off the top. Might not have been the finest hour.
Because of the preponderance of multi-race/leg betting there are provisions that are stated and put into effect when there are late scratches and late surface changes. These are all designed to protect the bettor from being confronted with new information after their bet was placed. For the most part, they work, and are understood.
One thing you can bet on, they're working on this one.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
Next tell us about the horses that jump the hedge- those hanging chads were associated with the "butterfly ballot" - you might say Gore got gored.
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