The Handicappers

Grants Pass Betting Window

Never have so many said so much to a select few and have it mean so much to racing. The handle is goosed by opinions and satellites

Since I've paid attention to thoroughbred racing since 1968 and still have my marbles and a fairly robust bank account at 72, I feel I can talk about how things are different—and better for the bettor.

Sure there are basically far fewer people at the racetrack, except on marquee days for the Classics and Breeders' Cup, and vacation destination places like Saratoga and Del Mar, but the money finds its way into the till through online wagering and satellite broadcasts.

Purse levels are predicated on handle, and Saratoga is offering $100,000+ races for optional claiming races, and $90,000+ for maiden races. Even New York Bred races are highly lucrative. The personalities offering opinions on TV are a beauty queen who wears runway fashions, a blonde standing in the paddock and occasionally on horseback who can tell you everything you need to know about a horse's anatomy, a retired major league catcher from Brooklyn who is thoroughly at home with the Racing Form in front of him, two retired jockeys, two professional handicappers, one who is slightly acerbic at times, the other who might be scary looking with a high hat of brillo hair, but is as affable as they come, an active, successful trainer, and a genial host who ties them all together.

Can't name who they are? Then you haven't been watching the FoxSports channel telecasts with Acacia Courtney, Maggie Wolfendale, Paul Lo Duca, Gary Stevens, Richard Migliore, Andy Serling, Johnathon Kinchen Tom Amoss, and Greg Wolf. And that's just basically in the New York area. Tracks all across the country have their on-air personalities and public handicappers who offer race analysis, picks, and even some good information if you're listening closely.

Maggie Wolfendale, who can go on and on about the size of a horse's hoof, the slope of their back, and the type of blinkers they're wearing, said something the other day that made me look up from my newspaper when she was on the telecast. I have mentally filed it.

A horse sired by Midshipman, Shipsational, romped home with a 6¾ length lead as a first-time starter in a maiden race the other day at Saratoga. Maggie pointed out that the sire Midshipman was going for a relatively low $7,500 stud fee. But Shipsational, bred by the Firestones, went for $125,000 at the sales, indicating, at least to Maggie, that it wasn't the breeding (pedestrian) driving the sale price, but the look/confirmation of the horse and probably their audition, horse-in-training workout.

Okay, it was a typical Maiden Special Weight race for New York Bred 2-year-olds, 5½ furlongs on a sloppy, sealed track with four only other entrants, but the observation of the stud fee and the final sale price was a new nugget for unraced horses, or 2-year-old handicapping in general. I've always looked at both figures, but never calculated the ratio between them. Thanks Maggie.  

There are also all sorts of handicapping shows and podcasts devoted to racing. The Daily Racing Form can link you to several, and there are many others through links on Twitter. TVG does more than a good job promoting betting, the lifeblood of horse racing.

Racing handle almost seems to be recession proof. The handle at Saratoga is up from last year. There are now so many ways to play a racing card it can be impossible to even think about them all. From the era of Daily Doubles as the only "exotic" bet, to the cautious introduction of three exactas on a card, in the early '70s, there are now so many ways to formulate a bet you can forget what your options are sometimes. I know I do.

And when you have on-air broadcasters putting together $60-$90 multi-leg race tickets, there is no wonder the handle is up. Hit one of those babies and your relatively modest bet can return a multiple many times over.  It is a rare multi-leg ticket that comes out in the relatively low atmosphere of $30, which is a sizable bet when your ticket can be worthless immediately after the first leg with a loss. Try, try again but it will cost you. Pretty soon you're spending real money.

While multi-leg betting does not appeal to me, the comments as to the picks for the legs do. Win and exacta wagering is what I still cling to.

One of the literally colorful handicappers to pop up on the screen is Jonathon Kichen, (@UTbighair) a winner of a top level handicapping contest and one who finishes high up in such competition.

Jonathon is also the only racing personality who has his own clothing line of shirts. Aside from colorful, they are artistically patterned and fit a race track look of someone who might know something. If you're comfortable with a rakish hat, you can pull off a gambler/tout look, even if that's not what you really are. At the racetrack, you never know who's telling you the truth anyway. There is no truth until the race is over. Then, everyone knows everything. It's all easy then.

The other day I was pissing and moaning that there is no racing news in general newspapers. Sure, the Daily Racing Form is the Bible, but you have to go online to read it, unless you're buying that day's past performances for a track you're betting. And finding a hard copy at a newsstand is near impossible if you're not near a racetrack.

Thankfully, you can download a race card for a fraction of what a hard print costs, usually up to $11.00, which is a lot for a newspaper. But there are generally 5-6 tracks' past performances in there, and if you're a bettor who puts their money virtually everywhere, then that's for you.

The day or so after I was carping about the absence of racing stories there appears in yesterday's NYT a two-page spread with color photos of Joe Drape's story about the half-mile bull ring racetrack in Oregon, Grants Pass, nestled in between two huge forests and in a valley with a mountain backdrop, down Interstate 5 from Portland. Grants Pass is a town of 35,000 or so, but it seems the racetrack is the nucleus of the town's interest. A retired gymnastics teacher is a leading owner, who owns and breeds her own horses. She wins at a nice 22%.

Drape reports how a local set of brothers who made a fortune selling coffee, have invested heavily in the track and its infrastructure to create what can truly be called a Brigadoon atmosphere of genteel and safe racing—with betting.

And lest you think all the money goes to Del Mar and Saratoga, consider that the Grants Pass handle has gone from $60,000 a day to $407,000. TVG carries it, and of course promotes its betting. The Daily Racing Form prints pps and race charts. Its daily purse distribution is an average of $66,000, with hopes to double it within three years.

Reporting on racing in a daily paper has changed greatly. Everyone is aware of the results from TV and the Internet. The late Harvey Pack talked of the time when he started doing his schtick that no one knew a race result unless you were at the track, or read the paper the next day. There were no phones at the facilities, afraid that illegal bookmaking would flourish on site. Cell phone have taken care of that inconvenience.

So, a newspaper like the NYT has gone to what I call Life Magazine/Sports Illustrated journalism, writing feature stories about a sport and surrounding it was huge color photos. 

Along with the absolute crazy number of choices of ways to bet, there is an experiment brewing which would put racing back in line with the hand-book days of betting a horse and getting a guaranteed odds quote that won't change as post time nears. If say the Morning Line is 2-1, and you take 2-1, you get 2-1 no matter how favored, or not favored the horse becomes.

Monmouth is supposed to be experimenting with this for win bets only. I'm not sure if they will change the odds as post time nears with a newly guaranteed bet, but the concept of getting a bet placed at odds that won't change is a very interesting one. The nature of pari-mutuel wagering is that it is skewed to the amount bet, no matter how many people are contributing to that bet.

Anyone who has been ever placed a bet will likely have experienced the shrinkage in odds on their choice from the time they made the bet to the time the gates open. A bet made with five minutes to go at 4-1 can turn into a bet at 9/5 if someone, or a cluster of someones, bet heavily in the interim. It's like what living in the Weimar Republic was like. The price of bread changes in an instant.

The broadcasters will tell you after a race that when a favorite, or a near favorite wins, that the "public was right." The truth is, the so-called "public" might be a small set of individuals, or even one individual, whose action dropped the odds and was rewarded with the win, whatever it pays. Favoritism is not driven by the number of people making the same choice, it is driven by the preponderance of the bet against all the other bets. The enduring racetrack statistic of favorites winning a third of the races doesn't mean in the slightest that a third or more of the crowd had it.

Racing has never been more robust with betting choices, commentary and ability to actually see the races live, while at the same time being more fragile because of horse safety issues and doping integrity issues than ever before.

Fixed odds wagering, if it can be pulled off, will be the single biggest thing to hit racing since pari-mutuel wagering was introduced. I can't wait to see if it will work. I've lived long enough to see some new things.

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