One of the elements I most look forward to when reading the DRF "Breeders' Cup Advance" issue are the oddities, from a North American perspective, of European horse racing. For example;
A horse finishing twenty-seventh by 36 and three-quarter lengths. What you cannot see in the image above is that this race was at a mere mile distance, barely longer than a sprint and - perhaps most astonishing of all - three horses finished behind this recalcitrant steed.
Then there was this gem of parimutuel wagering:
A horse recently going off at odds of 100-1.
And this;
The British horse Brown Panther routinely racing at distances between two and two and one-half miles. In these United States, races of one and one-half miles (like the Belmont Stakes) are exceptional and races at greater distances are exceedingly rare. Brown Panther is just getting warmed up at 1.5 miles.
My own picks were completed (contingent upon late scratches, jockey changes, equipment changes, venue changes, variations in expected weather conditions, seismic activity in southern California, etc.) by Thursday evening so that I could participate in both tricking and treating on Friday. I did not discover until Friday that my eldest Disney XD niece, now being a teenager and thus too cool to hang out with her family on Halloween, had ditched us in favor of joining three of her school chums in dressing as the four adolescent genetically mutated martial artist shell-wearing reptiles of pizza-eating fame. Cowabunga, dude! Cowabunga, indeed. Lou and I escorted Wonder Woman around her neighborhood:
A minor inconvenience such as a fractured knee cap would not prevent this super heroine from crime fighting nor candy acquisition [foreshadowing]. Aside from the boots and crutches, that was a home-made costume that Lou's mother-in-law created with the capable assistance of Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman) herself.
With this year's BC being run at Santa Anita Race Course in scenic Arcadia, CA, The B Team Syndicate was off to a later start than we are accustomed on race days. I picked up The Old Master of the Turf ahead of schedule (always ahead of schedule with Mr B). Below you will find a rare exterior spyshot of Mr B's mid-century modern top secret bunker in an undisclosed location that was taken from the command seat of the Jeep Main Battle Tank prior to a high-level spaghetti dinner we shared on October 16. This scene was similar to the rendezvous that took place Saturday afternoon.
The Incomparable Joe Wilhelm hates my satellite radio presets.
Upon arrival at Turfway Park we soon were shown to a corner table in The Homestretch Room and got down to serious buffet raiding. On the menu this year was roast turkey, roast ham, (no prime rib, much to our grave disappointment) smashed 'taters (remember, this is Kentucky), steamed carrots (that were cold), allegedly steamed green beans (more like carbon frozen), a pasta and tomato sauce concoction that was watery, bland and awful, salad, and assorted fruits and pastries. The desserts were better and varied from cakes to pies to cookies fresh from the oven. The cookies were hotter than the veggies. If you go to Turfway, get the burger and fries they sell at the concession stand. Surprisingly they're quite good.
For the past few years the Breeders' Cup has expanded into being a two-day event. The Old Master of the Turf made a quick trip to Miami Valley Gaming in order to pick up a few Saturday editions of the Daily Racing Form for his cosa nostra of old school horse players but also to put down a few bets on the Friday races. I sent along with Mr B two WIN wagers on:
Hootenanny in the Juvenile Turf, and:
Osaila in the Juvenile Fillies Turf.
What these two horses had in common was the Italian-born, English-based jockey, Lanfranco "Frankie" Dettori. Dettori is, as has be written here before, the greatest jockey in the world. Frankie has so few rides in these United States that I bet him every opportunity I can. He won aboard Hootenanny at something like 7-1 odds but finished third on Osaila. And so as I began digging into my pockets in order to wager on Saturday's races, I was already comfortably ahead.
Saturday's first three races on the race card were not Breeders' Cup races and so collectively The B Team Syndicate skipped them. Thus, the 2014 World Thoroughbred Championships began with Race 4, the Juvenile Fillies. It was won by a 60-1 longshot. Nobody at our table - and perhaps nobody at Turfway Park - had the winner.
Race 5 was the Filly and Mare Turf. Due to overnight rains in Arcadia, CA, the turf course at Santa Anita was listed as being in "Good" condition, or one level of classification below "Firm" (the equivalent to a "Fast" dirt track). My WIN/PLACE and Exacta bets were losers, but I hit the Trifecta which paid $182.20 for a $1 wager:
Out of modesty and also due to a heightened level of caution over an Internal Revenue Left-Wing Hit Squad Service which has been criminally targeting outspoken Conservatives, I have decided to redact the size of my wagers (remember kids, the largest monopoly is the federal government). At this early stage, thanks to my win Friday on Dettori and then this Trifecta, I was going to exit Breeders' Cup day in positive territory. I was not going to wager enough after this point to erase all my winnings.
For the Filly and Mare Sprint, Race 6, on a "Fast" dirt track I cashed WIN and PLACE money on the winner, a Ghostzapper mare named Judy the Beauty.
This wager paid $32 for a $2 wager. I also wagered on Judy the Beauty to win this same race last year but in that effort she finished second by a half-length.
For Race 7, the Turf Sprint, I loaded up on another Frankie Dettori mount, a horse wearing saddle cloth 14 (there's that number again!) named No Nay Never. I thought this was Dettori's best opportunity to win on Saturday, as did a substantial number of other bettors who sent No Nay Never to the starting gate at odds of 7-2. Five strides from the finish I had the winner. Or so I thought. A furious finish found me coming out on the favorable side of a photo-finish for second and, more importantly, PLACE money. Lou said the effort from the horse that won, coming from last to first, was moving so fast at the finish that it looked like something out of a cartoon. No Nay Never paid $6.60 to PLACE.
I didn't cash any tickets on Race 8, the Juvenile. For those of you who might be interested in the particulars (you know who you are), I wagered on the #12 Daredevil. Daredevil was five-wide around the first turn, four-wide around the second turn and, as a result, faded to last by the time the field hit the top of the homestretch. Blame the poor showing of Daredevil squarely on the jockey.
For the mile and a half Turf, Race 9, I sided with the British horse Flintshire. Flintshire was the second betting choice, at odds of 3-1 and was entering this race directly from a second-place finish in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe three weeks earlier. Flintshire finished second in the Turf.
I tossed the eventual winner (Main Sequence, at odds of 6-1) into a three-horse Exacta Box which returned $32.40 for a $2 wager (the PLACE money on Flintshire was $4.80).
My two horses in the Race 10 Sprint, a Breeders' Cup race that I seem to have a better record for success than any other BC races, finished second and third (and my third-place horse, Private Zone at 8-1, was the horse upon which I wagered WIN and PLACE money). So no success there.
Had not Wise Dan aka The Free Money Express experienced soreness which led him to being sidelined for the Mile (Race 11), he'd have gone off as the favorite in the attempt to win his third-straight Breeders' Cup Mile. With Wise Dan out of the Mile, bettors scrambled to find a winner in the one race that they were expecting to not have to handicap. My exhaustive week-long handicapping exercises led me to a Japanese horse, the grandsire of which was 1989 Kentucky Derby winner Sunday Silence, named Karakontie.
Karakontie, although bred in Japan, had been racing in France at Longchamp and Chantilly. At the end of his 2013 campaign, as a two-year old colt, he won a Group 3 race (akin to a Grade 3 race here in these United States). In a sign of the quality of the field Karakontie beat that day, the second-place horse won his next time out. Karakontie began his 2014 campaign with a second-place finish, by a mere neck, in a Group 3 race. The winner of that Group 3 race was a very good Euro named Ectot and Ectot won his next time out. Karakontie followed up that narrow loss with a win in a three-quarter million dollar Group 1 race. His following race was at a distance almost a half-mile further than Karakontie, evidently, wants to run. In that Group 1 race he finished 8th out of 16 horses. Then, in Karakontie's most recent race he finished 11th in a 14-horse Group 1 field. But when one reads the so-called trouble line description for that race, it says; Checked 1 furlong in, lacked room, switched outside, rough trip. In the old adage of horse racing, a handicapper should have "drawn a line" through those two most recent races. Obviously, Karakontie encountered difficulties in those two races which precluded him from showing his best effort or from showing the kind of effort needed to win the 2014 Breeders' Cup Mile. However, it was evident that the Breeders' Cup bettors hadn't done this as the odds on Karakontie ballooned from his 10-1 morning line odds to 30-1 at post time.
Coming full circle, the Breeders' Cup Mile was set up - from a handicapping standpoint - to steal candy from babies.
I had the #14 (there's that number again!) Karakontie to WIN and PLACE, The Old Master of the Turf had Karakontie to WIN and PLACE and Lou, having a rough day of handicapping, loaded up on Karakontie.
Karakontie stormed home the winner, paying $62 to WIN and $33 to PLACE for your respective $2 wagers. Thus, $2 to WIN and PLACE (a $4 wager in total) on Karakontie returned $95. I snapped the photo below from the race replay which showed both the #14 Karakontie and his 30-1 post time odds:
This was a proud moment for me. As was Mr B getting on the phone to brag about what a great handicapper I am:
On this Breeders' Cup Saturday I cashed 6 winning tickets, and for the whole Breeders' Cup weekend (including Friday's score by Frankie Dettori) I cashed 7 winning Breeders' Cup tickets. That is probably a record for me.
For the Classic (the final - and featured - Breeders' Cup race), I talked myself out of betting eventual winner Bayern (although I included him on my back-up Pick Six ticket). This was the only race in which I did not wager on the horse that I'd handicapped earlier in the week. Serves me right.
You'd think that with all these winning tickets that The B Team Syndicate Pick Six must have been a winner. In thinking this you would be wrong. Somehow we managed to hit 1 out of 6 on our syndicate ticket (I had 2 of 6 correct on my smaller back-up ticket). About as poor a showing as The B Team Syndicate has ever had on a Pick Six. In fact, there were no 6-of-6 winners on the Breeders' Cup Pick Six (the consolation payout for 5-of-6 paid $114,000.00) and so there was a carryover to the next day, Sunday, of $1.5 million. That Sunday being the final day of racing at Santa Anita for the current live meet there was a mandatory payout, meaning that if there were no tickets with 6-of-6 or 5-of-6 or even 4-of-6 correct, 3-of-6 could be the winning combination. Or 2-of-6..... you get the idea. On the drive home Saturday night we discussed taking a shot at the mandatory payout Pick Six, seeing as how we were so flush with cash money, but Lou had to work and Mr B was physically exhausted from the long day we'd just spent. So you might imagine my surprise when Sunday evening Mr B called asking me, urgently, to go online and look up the payouts for the Santa Anita Pick Six. Not only had The Old Master of the Turf gone to Miami Valley Gaming without me (or Lou's one-third share), but he had a $2 Pick Six ticket in his pocket which, he thought, had 4-of-6 correct (in fact, Mr B did have 4-of-6 correct):
Minutes later I had the bad news to report; There were 6-of-6 tickets which paid $115,000.00 and the consolation payout for 5-of-6 correct paid $571.00.
Waking up Sunday morning I discovered the Heavy Artillery mainframe was again non-responsive and so on Tuesday I utilized my Breeders' Cup winnings in upgrading the HA mainframe to a terabyte beast that sounds like a Ford Model T when operational. Hmmm.....
Finally, as a means to gauge my own efforts, I like to compare my handicapping efforts with those of the experts at the Daily Racing Form. I think the DRF has a great staff of smart handicappers, among the best anywhere (but there are others as well; Randy Moss and Mike Battaglia at NBC Sports, Steve Haskin at The Blood-Horse...). On Breeders' Cup day the DRF assembles their experts' picks for the entire BC race card in one, two-page, easy-to-read graph:
Among the published picks from their 15 experts, just one - Brad Free - had correctly picked as many as two winners on Saturday. Seven of the DRF experts picked zero winners on Saturday. The far right-hand column (above) represents their synthesized "consensus" picks; one winner. Shockingly, for six of Saturday's nine Breeders' Cup races, the DRF consensus picks did not even include the eventual winner among their top four finishers. My two winners (grudgingly not including my "pick" of Bayern since I did not wager on him), Judy the Beauty and Karakontie, had me exactly equal to the best handicapping that the DRF experts themselves could muster. Which, as you long-time readers already know, is typical. There are no professional handicappers better than me. Or The B Team Syndicate. But mostly me.
Roll the credits!
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