See You Next Year

The end of a season of racing at Saratoga is not just the end of a meet. It is the end of horse racing summer memories for the year. We did get to go to Saratoga this year. No lockdown, so the streak of having gone in consecutive years starts again.

But at no other point in the year do I go to the races for five consecutive days, as I did this year. Of course it's a bit of a vacation, but not one most people would see as a vacation. Hey, some folks go on five day cruises. I make fun of them too.

When I think of it, or pull out an old program, I find it hard to believe I've been going there for so long. I won't be pulling out a program any longer. NYRA has jacked the price to $4.00 from $3.00 for a useless Pocket Program. If you buy or download the Daily Racing Form, the program numbers are in there as well. There is no need for a program.

A "free" Pocket Program downstate in May, given as part of the price gouging admission price with mandatory Ticketmaster fess that wound up costing us $20 to enter the increasingly neglected surroundings, at least contained a few lines of a past performance for each entrant. Not so upstate. Never has a few stapled sheets of paper been more worthless than this year.

Or maybe not completely worthless. I scooped up a program left by some patrons at the Fourstardave who left early (I can never understand that.) and leafed through it. All was familiar, and was there before, but for the first time I realized there was a "parlay" bet listed among the vast list of wagering types available. 

Coming from the era when the only "exotic" bet was a Daily Double followed a few years later in the early '70s by a few races that were exacta races, the sheer number of ways you can make wagers is astounding.

But there at the bottom of the list was "Parlay: Combine two or more races using win, place or show bets. All of your bets must be successful."

My dream multi-leg bet is possible? Make your own multi-leg wager? I've often thought of this, but I was stuck on a version of separate pools based on self-created multi-leg wagers created by the bettors. No pools here. A true parlay that of course means your proceeds from your first successful pick are plowed into your next pick...and so on for as many picks as you make—up to six apparently. You're own personal Pick-6, 4, 5, 3, or 2.

Okay, probably no life changing payout, but action that is spread across multi-legs for whatever amount you choose to start with. No $72 Pick-5 ticket suggested by Jonathon Kitchen or Paul Lo Duca that sees the $72 fly out the window when the rider is unseated at the gate like what happened yesterday to Jonathon's single pick in the 5th race. 

The gates popped open for the 5th Race and the favorite, Realm of Law, unseated Irad Ortiz, with Ortiz safely sliding off the horse and landing on his feet, like a cat–described by the chart writer as a "jogging dismount." Good-bye $72 ticket.

Jonathon was at least a gentleman about that outcome and expressed appropriate concern that Irad and the horse were all right. They were. But really, no faster way to lose $72 than to cobble together what you think is a winning 50¢ Pick-5 ticket comprising 144 permutations of selections, only to see it explode as soon as the gates open.

Can't wait to see how you play a parlay on the betting machines. Can I mix my bet types? Win on the first leg, place on the second leg, show on the third leg, etc? Start with $2 and see where I wind up? Believe me, a bust on a $2 bet is my kind of bust. Not $72.

There were many winners in Saratoga's 40-day 2021 meet. None more so than Chad Brown, who took the trainer's title, Steve Asmussen who won five Grade I races, and best of all, Louis Saez, who took the riding title away from the Ortiz cartel.

Personally, I bet on 49 of the 51 races when I was there for five days and lost $7. I got to eat at Hattie's again, never needing to read the menu. Just give me four pieces of fried chicken on a small plate with cranberry cole slaw and I've won again.

Saez won three races on opening day, and from then on never looked back. And as much as Saez's winning  the title is an accomplishment, there can be a huge amount of credit given to his agent, Kiran McLaughlin, a one-time top trainer turned jockey's agent who earns every bit of his 25% fee of the jockey's earning by placing him on live mounts–winning mounts. The best handicapper on the grounds is an agent whose jockey wins a title. 

The agent is the unseen part of the races. The agent trolls the trainers for contracting his rider to ride their mounts. Certainly trainers seek out agents and their jockeys, but there is always the agent's opinion to take the assignment. Certain trainers have go-to jockeys that they give so-called "first call" to, but for the most part, the game is an audition for trying to get the jockey on the the horse most likely to win. And picking that horse is the agent's job. If behind every successful man there is a woman, behind every successful jockey is a very good agent.

Asmussen had his own version of a Double. He set the record for most wins by a North American trainer, sailing past Don Baird's lifetime 9,445 wins. Asmussen races at several tracks at the same time, and has won as many at 600 races in a season, but breaking the record at Saratoga with the racing world watching had to be extra special.

Baird's wins came mostly at Mountaineer, a track in West Virginia (Yes Virginia, there is a track in West Virginia.) formerly known as Waterford Downs. For me, Mountaineer is forever in my memory when a member of the Assembled drove to Mountaineer to bet on a horse that was his last name, Bonilla. It seems Jose B. had been winning on Bonilla at different tracks, (and at large payouts) but when entered at Mountaineer, his Capital District OTB wasn't taking Mountaineer bets.

Jose resorted to his car and drove to Mountaineer, but arrived too late in the evening to make his bet. Construction on the roads leading to New Cumberland, West Virginia created unanticipated delays. He claims he would have made some money on Bonilla. if he had gotten his bets down.

But the trip wasn't wasted. He drove to Virginia to see his sister. A horse player always finds a way to make lemonade from lemons.

So we say good-bye to Saratoga for 2021. We'll catch some races downstate in September and October, starting on September 18th when Bobby G's friend, Richie Pressman, sends out Step Dancer, trained by Barclay Tagg in a $1 million race, the Jockey Club Derby, a Breeders' Cup "win and you're in" race, a 1½ mile turf race for 3-year-olds. The Assembled will be assembled.

The Jockey Club Derby is a new race to me. NYRA, in their lopsided wisdom, has stripped Belmont of some Fall Classics, like the Jockey Club Gold Cup and the Flower Bowl and put them on Saratoga's schedule this past weekend.

NYRA a few years ago embarked on a stakes schedule that lumped several stakes on the same day at Saratoga, hopefully making the racing very attractive for trainers as well and bettors. It's worked, since Saratoga's handle this year set a record, but it does cannibalize some stakes from Belmont. Belmont is going to be known now as the home of the Islanders hockey team when the attached UBS arena opens this year.

Since Step Dancer's last race was a win as the favorite in the restricted Cab Calloway Stakes (restricted to offspring of New York Bred sires) you have to fully admit the horse is entering the very deep end of the pool. A $1 million turf race has to attract a contingent form Europe, and I'm sure the jockey Ryan Moore and one or two trainers named O'Brien will be there, but hey, as they say, the race is run on the track, not paper.

But Step Dancer is on my Watch List and is working out quite nicely. An unlikely win, or even an in-the -money placing will be heaven sent. I'm looking forward to the bets I might make. There is never a time a horseplayer doesn't look ahead.

Will Joe Drape, who I met at Fourstardave, file a story labelled "Post Card from Belmont." Unlikely. We'll probably not even see his byline from the place. Racing enters the journalistic version of The Twilight Zone until the Breeders' Cup in November, or when Bob Baffert gets caught again.

Forty days of Saratoga 2021 produced nearly 40 days of rain. More than 40 races came off the turf. The year is going to come when my streak of going to Saratoga is broken because my own streak of living will be broken. 

But it hasn't happened yet.

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