Kurt Vonnegut warns us in Cat\'s Cradle, \"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.\"

Anyway, for a variety of reasons I haven\'t been to a track for many years, (it\'s not the same game I fell in love with) but for twenty-five years of my life I was at one, or an OTB, every chance I got. And for most of those years, I tracked the odds of every horse in every race. Always what I was interested in was how the horses were bet in relationship to the morning line. It is my conviction that the butcher\'s thumb on the scale, if it exists in any race, is to be detected in the relationship between the morning odds and how a horse is bet. But I don\'t want to oversimplify the process. One cannot read an odds board well without having a keen understanding of past performances. And always one must distinguish between Veritas and verisimilitude. Nor can I encapsulate twenty-five years of experience into one posting. Still, this question needs to be asked, In the race under scrutiny the second place horse was listed at 15-1 and went off at 15-1. Was that a bad morning line? Or was the odds board telling you something? I mean, a 12-1 morning line got crushed in the pools, and the 15-1 never drifted? Might be a horse worth using in a horizontal. (No, I\'m not redboarding. Just illuminating the process.)

I also noticed that on each of the first two days of the meet (maybe two out of the first three) a horse listed at 20-1 won at 20-1. Were these good or bad morning lines? And, since 20-1 morning lines generally drift higher, was the density of the betting maybe telling you something?

I guess I\'ll leave with this thought: A good lines maker should definitely be able to recognize the betting favorite. No excuse not to be able to do that 80% or more of the time. But on the other hand, most discrepancies in the morning line will be self-corrected in the pools, or better yet, to the astute observer, self-revealing.

Hi guys, it\'s been awhile, but this conversation needs a new perspective.

The bottom line is that betting horses with a 50-1 morning line, (win, place) in the Kentucky Derby has been a gold mine. This year for every $8.00 invested in such a bet the return would have been $38.60.

Then let\'s not forget Giacomo and Mine that Bird.

From an investment perspective it\'s akin to the old stock theory of putting your money into the Dow Jones stocks that underperformed the year before. This year\'s return might suck, but long term you will do all right.

Now the problem with arguing that deflated prices on long shots in the Kentucky Derby is a natural by-product of uninformed crowds is, as pizzalove pointed out, it is a rather recent phenomena, at least to the degree it is manifesting itself now.

Now it\'s also true we\'ve had two $100 winners in the last eight years, and maybe that has encouraged a greater interest in the once a year money to spread itself among the long shots. And if the argument is that there is only so much informed money to be put into the pools, then the rise in handles, by logical deduction, must be coming from uninformed sources, which lends some credence to the argument that it is uninformed money that is finding its way onto hopeless long shots in greater proportions. But here, I also have some sympathy with pizzalove\'s argument that many once a year bettors are going to bet the favorite, especially if they\'re throwing big money around.

I\'m not going to come down on either side of the argument. In the end, I\'m getting too old to care what people think; I\'m much more interested in how they think.  And one thing is still true in Racing: there is a lot of lazy and flaccid thinking being hailed as wisdom.

Still, here\'s the conundrum: If somebody was dumb enough to bet every horse in the Kentucky Derby that was 50-1 in the morning line, and I\'m presuming there were very few 50-1 morning line\'s before the twenty horse field, their ROI wouldn\'t be very dumb.

OK, so throw Giacomo out as an anomaly, when Mine That Bird wins there is a history of 50-1 morning lines winning the Derby. Enough of a history to whet some body\'s interest. And all of a sudden the 50-1 horse in the Kentucky Derby disappears. Smart money, or dumb money, that is the question? Whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of handicapping the race,,or just be satisfied with betting, or batch betting, a promising angle and getting a $38.60 return on every $8.00 bet.

Ah, once there was a game where horses who won their Grade I would carry more weight, and then more weight, and then more weight and then they would be running not against their peers on the track but against the immortals.

The ability to carry and concede great weight the standard by which greatness was measured.  The race where a runner was going to measure himself against the immortals, the most anticipated race in the sporting world.

But, hey, a horse has to hang around the track until five or six to be mature enough to run against the immortals, so let\'s sell the public on three year old racing, (which will make the fans dam grateful when we let a four year old run) and get our charges to the breeding shed.

This abandoning the raison d\'etre of the sport, the pawing off of the crown jewel so to speak, pretty much explains why the game has been running around like a  headless chicken for the last ten years. The noble head of its grandest tradition has indeed been cut off.

On the bus to Hollywood (from Anaheim) I sat next to a guy who went to high school with Bob Cousy.  Didn\'t take him more than five minutes to tell me that.
The other 90 minutes were spent telling me that the track authorities would not let him win. Under any circumstances. He knew how crazy it sounded, why would the track authorities not let him win?  Who knows, maybe it wasn\'t the authorities, maybe it was the track Gods who were jinxing him. But there could be no other logical explanation for his losing as consistently as he lost without it being a personal vendetta designed to keep him from winning. Everybody wins at least sometimes, but not him.  Why not him?  Who knows,  All he knows is the jockey\'s must know which horse he bet.  And they weren\'t going to give a top effort on any horse he bet, for sure. For personal reasons, you see. And the photos, what he could tell me about how they doctored photos to cheat him.

Well, I tried to get him back to talking about Bob Cousy.  

Still, I miss my days aboard the track buses.

The accident-car analogy might be applicable to racing in general but when it comes to running Rachel against colts on two weeks rest a more precise comparison would be the  baby-car seat analogy.

You need a Form, you\'re in a hurry, you\'re only going a couple of blocks, you put Jr. in the car seat but you don\'t strap him in.  Probably nothing happens.  But if it does, you get rear ended and Jr gets thrown from his seat, injured or killed, do you ever forgive yourself? Or do you live with the anguish that you did not do everything possible to protect your child?  Everything possible to protect: the difference between tragic accident and criminal negligence.

Now, I don\'t think there is a high probability that Rachel will be injured running in the Preakness. But I do think running on two weeks rest against colts there is a heightened probability. Maybe no more heightened than an injury occurring to a child who is not strapped into his car seat.  But why run that risk?

Horses will always run to satisfy human vanity. But,should they be imprudently endangered to satisfy hubris?  And that\'s what paying $10 million dollars for Rachel and running her in the Preakness is all about: not sport, but hubris.

Here\'s a poem by Philip Larkin.  One can only hope that such a life awaits Rachel.


At Grass

   
   The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
To fable them : faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start : against the sky
Numbers and parasols : outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies :
Only the grooms, and the groom\'s boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

Well, anybody that runs, runs through pain all the time.  And most would concede the harder the surface the achier the run.  By itself this means nothing, but in the context of my argument my point is running on  hard dirt, rather than grass, adds another level of physical stress to the equation.  Unless, I\'m mistaken, I thought the purpose of synthetic tracks, was to reduce shock induced stress on the horses. Less stress,less aches and pains, fewer breakdowns, or so the theory goes. Or, in other words, dirt tracks were causing too much stress on the horses.

While one has to concede that entering Rachel in the Preakness would heighten interest in Preakness to maybe a heavyweight championship level, the risk one
runs, if anything happens to her, is goodnight racing.

Remember, last year\'s Congressional hearing was basically a whitewash, predicated on the notion that the easiest way to avoid an efficient hearing is to conduct an inefficient one.  There will be no cover this time.  The public will be outraged.

And for good reason. JB has, year in year out, documented the toll Triple Crown races take on horses.  Now you\'re advocating entering a fillie against colts off a monster new top on two weeks rest.  

It\'s such a recipe for disaster that I will say this: if Rachel runs in the Preakness and anything bad to her happens. her connections should be held criminally liable for animal abuse.

Which is not to say she can\'t win the race; she is truly a magnificent horse.  Still, she is a fillie running against colts.  And on the dirt.  In Europe fillies run against colts all the time, on the turf.  And even in America it\'s not all that unusual for distaffers to beat males on the turf.  But dirt racing is more demanding on the animals; forces them to dig deeper, to ignore more pain.  The irony being, the more of a champion a horse is the deeper it will dig, the more it digs the likelier it injures itself.

Because (and this is central to understanding horses racing) horses are basically pack animals.  Whose dominance in the wild is manifested by who leads the pack.  Horses instinctively will run themselves into the ground for a moment of glory.  Think here of the horse dropping to a 32,000 claimer with no recent form who makes the bold move and gets up at the wire. Visually, he looks like a lock to win next out at 32,000 again, but probably he\'ll be seeing 14,000 claimers before he sees the winning circle again.  This because he cashed in his class coupons in the 32,000 race he won.  That was the day he could be dominant and he willingly paid the physical price for being so.  Such is the nature of the horse.

Which brings us back to Rachel running in the Preakness.  In what should be a very demanding race for her (if only because of the spacing) she is going to give it her all.  She is a champion, she is going to dig as deep as she can.  And she will willingly compromise her well being to lead the pack home.  She will not pull herself up, or slow down, if she feels herself weakening.  She will try to persevere. And because she\'s running against colts she will have to dig that much deeper.  And she will dig, Dig, dig, dig, until maybe, courage tested to the breaking point, something snaps.

And then, the crocodile tears.  Listen, horses don\'t have the ability to protect themselves, humans must protect them. A responsibility which, surprisingly enough, requires some horse sense.  The connections want to run Rachel in the Belmont, fine.   Run her in the Preakness, on two weeks rest, off a monster new top,against the colts, you\'re playing Russian Roulette with the horse\'s life.

And this time there will be no forgiveness.

Actually, Tom Durkin announced a few times during the course of the program that the morning line odds on Master and Driven by Fear should be transposed.  Driven by Fear, who was a late scratch, should have been listed at 30-1 and Master 4-1.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/the-most-accurate-electio_b_140181.html

My handicapping philosophy is follow the money.  Horse racing is a sport, a game and a business, but mostly it\'s a business.  When money is spent the connections are going to find a spot to get it back.  How they fine tune and position horses for a maximum effort, the most fascinating part of the game to me.
Anyway, the horse flies cross-country for the second time in three races.  And this time brings its regular jockey.  Well, that seems like an angle to me.

Remember, Uncle Buck, the book is called \"Who Moved My Cheese\" not \"Who Moved My Melted Cheese.\"

I have no problem playing synthetics, although some of them don\'t necessarily make for aesthetically pleasing racing.. But Pro-Ride not holding together in the afternoon warmth is a significant problem for a Breeder\'s Cup venue.

It\'s true that the afternoons should be cooler by then.  Otherwise, they\'re going to have to ice down the track between races.

Very interesting concept, JB, though probably frought with regulatory peril.
But just brainstorming the idea:  How about the track running a seperate pick six, pick seven, or pick all pool sponsered by slot money.  As I\'m envisioning it, everybody who attends the track (or the slot operation during live racing) would get a free entry into this pool where winning would reguire picking six (or whatever) winners in a row cold.  And the slot operations would make a two dollar contribution to the pool for each ticket submitted.  It might make for some interesting carryovers, some good synerigistic energy, as well as providing a much needed incentive for people to attend the races live.

And if folks off track wanted to play into the pool, maybe a minimum $10 bet (for what you could get free at the track)  This to prevent syndicates from dominating the pool.

Again, just brainstorming.

David Halberstam used a great line many years ago (though, I only read it for the first time the other night) when writing about what he considered a dilution in the quality of professional footbal caused by expansion.  \"More and more of less and less.\"

Seems to capture the present state of Racing also.  Could even be the official slogan of the NTRA. \" Horse Racing 2008: More and more of less and less.\"

Along those lines: horses that get disqualified for drug positives should lose eligibility for that condition.  The situation one sometimes sees where a horse wins a maiden, starts running against winners, gets disqualified from its maiden win, then drops back against maidens, (or having one a 1x in the meantime is again eligible for a 1x by virtue of losing its maiden score) just creates a chance for two betting scores for the connections.

And/or: horses that get disqualified for drugs should not only lose the purse for the race in question, but should have an amount equal to the purse money they lost due to the drug positive deducted from their subsequent on-track winnings which would be earmarked for drug testing.

That should get the connections thinking twice.

Another change I would welcome would be if in the Past Performances instead of just saying \'disqualified from purse money,\' they would say \'disqualified for purse money for drug positive.\'

And, of course, instead of just saying \'previously trained by Rick Dutrow,\' the line would read, \'previously trained by Rick Dutrow suspended for drug positive.\" Of course, that would take an editorial committment, the type of spine the Daily Racing Firm has not shown evidence of in the past (or in the present.)

How about from a tax on stud fees? It seems to me the Breeders have been taking way more out of the game then they have been giving back for quite some time.