Not much to nibble on here. 6 to 8 horse fields max with little value. I suppose it’s Covid related but NYRA’s handle can’t be too good.
This a Twitter post from o_crunk yesterday (Sunday):
\"SAR handled $19.5M yesterday, their lowest Saturday handle since 8/11/2012. Every day this week has been down 20% y/o/y at SAR. DMR handled $21.6M yesterday for their big Pacific Classic card, a marginal increase over the same card last year which handled $20.8M.\"
In fairness, the unexpected storm Saturday decimated field sizes (even some MTO\'s did not start because they had not shipped up from Belmont), and the year-over-year comparison is affected by this having been Travers week last year. Interesting that, even with the storm, Saratoga handle was only $2 million less than the Pacific Classic card.
Going forward, I wonder, even after the pandemic, how many horsemen will decide not to ship up to Saratoga from Kentucky now that purses there have slots support.
In my eyes the game has been reduced to 4 Jocks and 5 trainers!The top jocks have won 50% of all the races and have been ITM in 80%, with the average mutual $9.20. Trainers have won 39% of the races. It\'s pretty much their own playground! Maybe players have allocated their funds elsewhere now.
I guess the pandemic has made me a glass half full guy.
You see a handful of trainers dominating racing at the Spa, which, statistically,
nobody can deny.
What I see is a great three trainer race among three of the better trainers at
NYRA over the last 15 years. I guess this \"race\" is made more interesting in that
many will be pulling against the \"favorite\", Chad Brown.