Drape Hits It Out of the Park

The disconnect between the outright giddiness of slots-fuelled large purses for claiming races and economic reality has long been a bone of contention for many in the sport, me included.

If a stock has an increase in earnings, the price of it goes up. It's how the market works. Horses at a fixed cost, suddenly racing for 3X or more the claiming price, tries to put a square peg in a round hole. It turns animals into commodities, can and has attracted the lowest of the low to this business, and it should never have been allowed to happen.

Joe Drape looks at the phenomenon today in the New York Times.

People complained about the methodology of the last New York Times article, and they had a point. However, the shoot the messenger strategy with this article should not happen. This one is all on us.


Notes:

Social Media/Twitter etc are spoke about with regards to horse owners and trainers letting fans know health issues of racehorses, on HRU. Also, a couple of initiatives to make it better for bettors are suggested (page 4, PDF)

What did you know and when did you know it? Regulators look at NYRA takeout snafu.

There are those out there who judge a racetrack by its driving colony and quality of horses. I guess it depends how you keep score. Balmoral Park, the track that attracts gamblers by carding good racing at a fair price, gave out $99,000 in purses on Saturday. Yonkers, with the best horses and the best drivers, gave out $1.1 million in purses on Saturday. The handle scorecard?  Balmoral $1.33 million, Yonkers, $1.19 million.

1882 & Post Ones

Imagine you have a Derby starter who looks lights out the best. Although you did not win the Juvy (your horse didn't race at two), you're undefeated, ran a couple of 118 Beyers, with 22.4 last quarters. Your colt even ran that in the Wood while 6 wide the whole way around.

It may be a coronation the first Saturday in May, you're that good.

The gates spring open for the Derby. Your colt, leaving from the rail, gets a nice run into the first turn. Sitting 11th, he moves out and circles the field running a 23 flat, making a comfortable lead in 47.4 (easy for him, because he's that good). Then the impossible happened. Calvin Borel is trying to scoot up the rail with a 142-1 shot (who is on the board at 8-1), veers out into a Pletcher horse who runs right into your colt and puts him into the outer rail. You've lost about 30 lengths, but, he is so good, that he picks himself up, catches the field, circles it again, and loses by a head.

Amazing performance.

However.....

Someone somewhere will say your horse lost the race because he didn't race as a two year old.

Someone somewhere will say you lost the race because post one in the Derby is a death post.

It's like clockwork.

For the latter, well, Derek Simon is doing better work than I could on that. He's doing what our post on Supercrunchers says to do. People likely still won't believe him, because of a world-view. However, it's as plain as day. Post one is not a death post. It's probably not exactly wonderful (what inside post is in a 20 horse field?), but if you are "chucking" a horse out from there, or if you are being Mr. Hyperbole like Baffert was a few years ago when he drew it, you should reevaluate what you're doing.

For the former - that no non-starting two year old has ever won a Derby -  it is equally frustrating for stats folks, I guess. But, like Derek's post on post one, it's simple statistics, that Gary West talked about on Friday.

Bodemeister didn't race as a 2-year-old. Not since Apollo in 1882 has there been a Derby winner who didn't race as a juvenile. But of all those who tried, how many were contenders? Well, not many, as it turns out. 

Of the last 47 Derby starters who didn't race as 2-year-olds, only Air Forbes Won (5-2 in 1982) was the betting favorite, and he probably shouldn't have been. Of the 47, 24 had odds higher than 20-1, 10 were included in the mutuel field and another, Trippi, would have been a long shot if he hadn't been part of an entry. 

He goes on to say that decent looking colts, like Pulpit, fractured a knee.

When you subset things in racing as a handicapper, you have to be pretty crafty, and act like a statistician or you'll get your head handed to you. With the "1882 Curse" we are subsetting bad data. And it's fairly logical.


If a horse does not race at two, it's because he or she is not ready, had a setback of some sort, and needs time. The colts who do race at two are on schedule and have very few physical issues. As West shows with the odds, these horses may have been rushed to the Derby, and weren't very good to begin with. The others, like Curlin? Well, it's not a Derby curse, it's the Derby itself. If you have ten capable-of-winning horses that fit the subset, who get into the gate over 130 years, and all of them lose, it's not a statistical anomaly, it's statistically expected.

Each Derby is a unique event; in fact, each race is a unique event. Just like you don't bet a favorite because they win 33% of the time and in race 6 of the day no favorite has won, you don't use rules like the above two to guide you.

If you are betting the Derby like so many of us will be in a week, look at the horse, look at his works, look at the rider and the pace and the 10,000 factors that go into handicapping a race. But don't look to media driven rules. They might be right this year or next or the next, but if they are, it's a normal distribution of events that's making them right, not statistical evidence.

Why Union Rags Will Be Chalk

I've been reading the press, some sharp bettors and twitter for the past week or two, and conventional wisdom says the big Beyer horse - Bodemeister - will be chalk for Derby 138. Some even think he'll be as low as 3-1.

Without the benefit of seeing the draw, I think this won't be the case. I believe Union Rags will be the favorite for four reasons:

1 - The buzz on this colt is still stout, despite the loss and the lack of a big 2012 Beyer. The clocker types are going ga-ga over him.

2 - Familiarity breeds betting dollars. Last year in the Juvenile, a million or more viewers watched him, and thought he was miles better than Hansen. Not a day goes by it seems that someone says he traveled further than the circumference of Mars more than the winner. There are fans, both casual and rabid, wanting to see him get revenge and make the Trakus number look like gold. Think Zenyatta. She was 4-5 against Blame in the Breeders Cup Classic. Everyone saw her close from St. Louis to almost run him down. She'd probably would have been 1-5 in a rematch two weeks later. People love closers who almost win.

3 - The "Trip Over The Track". Churchill can be quirky, and loving Churchill - which he seems to - makes him a formidable first choice.

4 - He's currently the chalk in offshore books and at Betfair, despite the Bode-Beyer talk.

Unless Bodemeister draws an advantageous middle post, and Union Rags draws outward of 17 or the rail or two hole, I think he's a slam dunk for favoritism come the First Saturday in May.