The Euros & Lottery's

This tweet showed up on my timeline yesterday:

Look at the change of equipment on Your So Vain before and after Åke... pic.twitter.com/DhtjseCHs3
— Tristan Sjoberg (@TristanSjoberg) July 9, 2014

That's trotter Your So Vain last year (above) and this year (below).

It's a little weird to post it, because when you do it looks like you're taking a shot at Brad Maxwell (last year's trainer). I'm not. Brad is an excellent trainer and Your So Vain was very good last season.

What it does show is the difference, I feel, between Euro trainers and North American trainers with trotters. The rush to get a trotter right to make money at two and three has a modern domestic trainer reaching for the equipment shelf.  If he won't trot straight, add a head pole, if he won't trot, add trotting hopples. The list with finicky trotters can be endless, which in my view is why you see so many dressed like Robocop.

A good many of the times, again in my view (although I have spoken with good trot trainers about this before for years), the trotter is just not right. He's immature, something is bugging him or what have you. He likely does not need equipment or injections, he needs some TLC and some good old fashioned horsemanship. When the trotter is sounded up, or given time, he or she can come back with minimal equipment, be free and happy and trot sound and straight. Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

Ake and other Euro trainers espouse this view. If you watch an Elittlopp for example, you'll notice free swinging trotters, happy and sound and bouncing around like a ball, with almost no equipment.

Old time pacing trainers do similar. Bob McIntosh comes to mind. Some of his horses need no check, and wear only a small shadow roll, or a small blind (horseplayers often note that his horses like Ponder and Staying Together hold their head low. True, but only because he never cranked them up). His horses are free moving. Compare that to some of the modern pacing trainers with high percentages. Hoods or blinkers with cups are common. Knee boots and other equipment are common too. Send them down the road, keep them straight, and try and make money seems to be the method of operation.

Horse racing is amazing - especially so in harness racing where training techniques and equipment use means so much more than thoroughbred racing. I find it amazing because there are trainers out there who know horses so well, they can let them use their natural gait, give them time needed to show what they can do. Ake is one of those, and he is an excellent addition to the North American training ranks.

I love watching his trotters go. They move like a metronome. Just like the horse gods intended.

Lotto Mania

We'll have more on this soon, but Brad Cummings (formerly of the Paulick Report) has a new venture up and running called Equilottery. If this can get done, through massive red tape, infighting and more alphabets than a can of children's soup, it's a game changer. A big one.

Give the story a read here.

Have a nice Wednesday everyone.

Monday Musings On Handle and the Big Days

TimeformUS has their usual interesting (and more in-depth than anywhere you'll see) take on handle numbers in Thoroughbred racing for the second quarter up on their blog. June, where handle ticked up slightly, was a good month for racing, with decreased field sizes. Of course, this was skewed by a Triple Crown try, where not only Belmont, but pretty much everyone had a good weekend. But even leaving that out, I think the numbers are good.

Loss of race dates means handle will be off as a rule, yes, but it does not have to be a death knell. There are people who want to bet races, if the races are good enough, and a lot of them are waiting in the wings for opportunities. As is often said, give us 7 tens instead of 10 sevens. That racing did this with ten sevens is a positive.

Hong Kong, which prescribes to the seven tens theory, saw a record handle this year of US$13.1B. Only six or seven short years ago handle in HK was around US$8B. They've grown and despite hiccups, have held their brand. They are the World's number one destination for horse racing gamblers.

Timeform also looks at favorites percentage and ROI by field size. This is something that some powers in racing do not understand about us as gamblers. When you card short fields, sure it hurts exotic wagering because of the lack of combinations, but it is more than that. In short fields high takeout becomes not only impossible to beat, but impossible to hold gambler interest. If your game is impossible to beat it is not a game at all, but a place where people congregate to buy fare at food trucks.

Another thing the TF figures show is that average field size is about what Churchill Downs had last meet for field size. In other words, the track fed logic that field sizes were the big reason for their decline has more holes in it than a bucket at a New Hampshire shooting range.

Belmont etc

People constantly talk (it's much less now than several years ago as people understand gambling more and more) about what a Triple Crown winner would do for horse racing. I think it's obvious that we saw in June is its more important to have a Triple Crown try in racing. Belmont TV viewership was about what it was for the Derby. Their card was beefed up and did big handles, (although I am sure you could've carded five claimers and got a huge boost too).

On Belmont Day they promoted their 4th of July weekend card, and it did well ($18 million according to Alan here). Big Days are where its at. The Met Mile card and their $16M-$20M handle went poof when they moved those stakes to Belmont Day, so it's one less big race day to promote and I think that's no damn good long term, but at least Belmont and NYRA are trying some things to promote the sport and get people to wager by carding bigger fields.

This TC try was good for the here and now, but I wonder about next time. With the issues during and especially immediately after the races were over, the branding had to take a hit. Will the thousands of people who suffered the assorted issues come back? Is this negative branding long term?

Queens Plate

Yesterdays Queen's Plate card was very good, with a lot of bettable races. Handle looks to be quite good again this year.

I remember being on a panel at the Canadian Gaming summit in 2008 and I asked "why don't you [Woodbine] promote wagering more when you are on TV?" It's always been something that bothered me. There's a big race and we see feature after feature about a feed man while there's some betting going on. The answer bordered on promoting wagering being a gray area on the airwaves.

Lately that changed. Yesterday on TSN the Super High Five mandatory payout was promoted heavily. With a million dollar pool, there's a chance someone could win a million for twenty cents. I think they can even do better next year at promoting it. I believe a pool like this, done right, can achieve monster handles on QP Day, if they stick with it and make it part of the Queen's Plate brand.

Big M

Speaking of big cards, the Big M ran the Pace elims on Saturday night and the field is set for next Saturday's big day. It's a 6:30 post. We'll have more on that this week.

It's Not That Difficult to Be Honest

Several stories reported the handle decline at Churchill Downs this week. They were fine stories, but they pussyfooted around the real issue, as Brandon said on twitter.

Frustrating how reluctant media is to attribute any of Churchill's handle losses to idea that bettors might've responded to a price increase
— Brandon Valvo (@BValvsRacing) July 2, 2014

If, after a much publicized price increase, your local lemonade stand had their sales crater 25% this summer, we would not have to hire Columbo to figure out why. The business would not say it's been a little too humid for foot traffic, The World Cup was on, or demand was really, really high, but they ran out of lemons.

Racing, an insular business, has been run with increasing rates of takeout for so long it's become a way of life. Insiders do not want to talk about it, nor do they want to have it publicized that a policy initiative was a mistake. This is why something as simple as a price going up and having people consume less of it seems like a foreign concept; something that happens to "other businesses".

Churchill Downs' handle went down this meet because the price of a wager was increased and as a result people bet less than they did last year.  It's not that difficult to be honest about a fact that is so obvious.