LEFT BANK / JERRY BROWN

[MIKE B]

hi jerry,


with the minus 4 1/4 that left bank got in early july, does that mean he beats every famous horse in world history on that day?

i find this absurd because how could anyone have beaten secreteriat in his belmont?

[nicely nicely]

In 1927, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs. He singlehandedly hit more home runs than any team in the American League.

Even though, Maris, McGwire, and Bonds have broken that single-season home run record, they haven\'t come close to matching the overwhelming dominance of that performance.

[Michael D.]

No horse that has ever run would have beaten Secretariat that day. Giving any horse a number within three or four points of Secretariat in a mile and a half race is simply a mistake. The horse was a freak of nature, with a heart a much bigger than anything else we have seen since. One of these days we may see another horse like that, most likely through AP Indy or Storm Cat blood, but as of yet, we have not. The numbers Left Bank have received, however, have been backed up time after time. Today\'s horses with  Northern Dancer and Mr Prospector blood can run sprints and middle distance races faster than they could twenty or thirty years ago. I do not think Secretariat could have run with Left Bank in a sprint, and it would have been a battle in a middle distance race. You are 100% correct though, going a mile and a half, we have seen nothing even close to Secretariat.

[ExPlayer]

   More likely, whatever # you think Secretariat earned on that day is too high. Maybe he ran a -5, or a -6 ?

[Michael D.]

Based on the TG figures today, I guess Secretariat ran about a -5. I think AP Indy and Easy Goer ran below 0, and Point Given around 0,butno other Belmont winner since has deserved anything close. So the question of the day..... who is better, Md\'O or War Emblem? I thought both performances were brilliant today. Md\'O ran really fast, and WE just jogged while giving ten lbs to his rivals. I have never been a strong believer in WE, but when he gets to play his game he is a fantastic horse...... and how about the guy who took in the half a million in the Spa pk6? He is damn lucky that Robbie Davis is unable to get a horse to run even close to his optimal speed; Danielles Magic was best in the final leg.

[HP]

Michael, you make a lot of comments about jockeys. Do you really believe they can significantly speed up or slow down a horse?

There are jockeys that do certain things well or certain things badly, but to some degree, the guys riding the top horses are the product of self-fulfilling prophecy. Bailey gets the best horses to choose from. If you get to ride the best horses Bill Mott trains and your choice is between that and riding a powerhouse from Coolmore, you stand a better chance of winning than the guy choosing between Wendel and Brida. At any meet, there are four or five guys everybody wants. Periodically someone emerges from the pack.

Jockeys are a side dish, not a main course. Some are better than others. In certain situations they are more of a factor. I\'ve seen Noel Wynter running away by ten lengths on an Allen Jerkens horse enough to know that the horse running a zero has very little to do with who\'s riding. The big jockeys kill your prices, period. All these comments on Bailey and Velazquez are not up to your usual high standards. HP

[tonyk]

Thats because Jerkens knows the horse will make the lead, stay out of trouble and basically anyone can win on the horse .Jerkens is the king of using (excuse the expression ) @!#$ house jocks ,I love when he does this ,he basically knows the horse will not be beat and the guys he uses are such desparados that they won\'t try anything cute,he also has a bit of loyalty to the guys who exercise his horses .I heard an interesting story once about Dennis Cayo once ,its seems Dennis was working a decent horse regularly for Nick Zito ,Nick promised to ride Dennis on race day ,a friend of mine was with Dennis when they checked the entries for that  fateful day and an astonished Dennis Cayo exclaimed \"I can\'t believe he\'s going to ride Bailey\" Good Luck T.K.

[dpatent]

Not to stir up a hornet\'s nest (really, I\'m just asking) but Easy Goer\'s Ragozin Belmont number was, I believe, 1/4 or 1/2 point faster than Secretariat\'s.  Also, Point Given\'s Belmont was faster than Secretariat on the Ragozin sheets.  

What story do the TG sheets tell?

[TGJB]

I was trying to stay out of this, especially since I wasn\'t making figures back then. I gave Easy Goer a fractional negative, PG a huge negative 2 1/2, I think. Athletes in all sports are getting better, and the Babe Ruth analogy is a good one--he was better relative to his time, but today\'s players are better athletes.
Keep in mind that the track Secretariat ran over was super-fast (several track records equaled or broken that week), and none of the horses behind him ever won another race of any kind. I would also add that knowing what I do now I certainly would not trust Ragozin\'s figure--it was probably the only 2 turn race on the card, and a short field with the only other good horse breaking down, and (probably) the others running X\'s. He may have just paired Secretariat to his Derby number, which might be what I would have been forced to do too.

[HP]

The Babe Ruth analogy is decent but limited. Your oft-repeated conclusion that today\'s horses are \'better athletes\' is a little oversimplified and deserves more discussion.

A more accurate extension of the analogy might be that today\'s horses, like Mark McGwire, may be \'pumped up\' on a more regular basis for better performances, but these performance levels cannot be sustained and often result in injury. They run faster and jump higher. This does not make them \'better athletes\', especially if they only run faster and jump higher once or twice. Call them what they are, chemically aided freaks who couldn\'t surpass past greats on natural talent if their lives depended on it. I\'m sure training has something to do with it, but how much? Ask Ken Caminiti. After all, the weights work better with the drugs and I don\'t know how different it is for horses.

Baseball is a useful comparison. The benefits of these increased levels of performance to the respective sports are minimal. The horses run a few big races and then they\'re finished. McGwire\'s real legacy will be steroid testing in major league baseball, which will be going on long after the last flashbulb pops in his heartfelt Hall of Fame speech (where he will not mention steroids and be heralded, sickeningly, as a \'nice guy\').

MLB attendance is down, which means that people are already saying \'70 homers, big effin\' deal.\' I don\'t have to tell you that, with a few notable annual exceptions, compared to 30 years ago nobody goes to the track, any recent superhorse notwithstanding. If Mark McGwire is taking this stuff by choice, God only knows what they\'re giving horses. MLB and horse racing have two things in common, (1) drug issues and (2) long term and potentially irreversible troubles.

Do you really believe Mark McGwire was a \'better athlete\' than Babe Ruth? After the \'inflated\' years where he hit 150 homers in two years, McGwire had to hang it up because he couldn\'t hold a bat or walk around the bases. Some athlete. Great role model too. Take this stuff and hit home runs, kids, it\'s worth it. Take those two years out of his stats and you see a very good first baseman, but not MARK McGWIRE! Mantle, Mays, Williams and DiMaggio were easily as good if not better than anyone playing today. Compared to these guys, \'McGwire\' and \'athlete\' do not belong in the same sentence. And before you say Barry Bonds, add in five lost seasons for Ted Williams. Nobody today is \'better\'.

Same goes for horses. Point Given ran four or five big races. He had his 70 home run season (six months, tops). You can\'t really believe this makes him a \'better athlete\' than Secretariat.

There may be more horses today that can run at the Secretariat-level, but in these tainted times, I don\'t think the word \'better\' will be accurately applied to any of them. TG figures reflect the \'new reality\' but not the quality of today\'s athletic talent in comparison to yesterday\'s athletic talent. Such comparisons are unfortunately impossible. HP

[TGJB]

\"Today\'s horses are better athletes\" is a shortened form of a longer statement I originally made where I also mentioned selective breeding, nutrition, advances in shoeing, and \"sports medicine\". We may not be producing better NATURAL athletes in any sport, but the net result is bigger, stronger, faster--and in the limited context of measuring performance, that\'s all that matters. I offer no opinion of how fast Secretariat would run if trained by Cole Norman.
But I have to say, I recently saw a clip of Mantle\'s 500th, and was struck by how skinny he looked. This guy hit the facade of the roof, and no-one has done it since.

[HP]

I\'ve just been struck lately by how generational comparisons are just totally whacked out in sports now for good, and for horse racing it\'s got to amount to the same thing to compare horses 20 years apart. It seems really awful to me in baseball. It\'s a shame because when I was a kid 30 years ago it was different and you had more of a legitimate basis for comparison, and that was a lot of fun. It was a good way to give your parents a hard time, and it\'s a shame to lose it. A lot of people are just going to look at the numbers and not factor in all the variables. Watching these big goons bums me out. HP

[Michael D.]

HP,
I guess it\'s all just a matter of personal opinion. Some handicappers put a lot of emphasis on sheet patterns, others look very closely at breeding, and some concentrate on the jockeys and trainers. I guess there is no way to quantify which factor is most important, but I definitely put more emphasis on the jockeys than most handicappers. I think Bailey and Velazquez have a unique quality that enables their mounts to reach their optimal cruising speed.
Obviously since Bailey has been doing it for so many years, there is no value in having this info, but with JR, you still get the most money back for your buck, so I would argue that moving up his horses is a winning strategy. Other jockeys that have the similar talent are Desormeaux, Espinosa, and Carrero, and their ROI\'s prove it. I find it interesting that the jockeys that concentrate on rating their horses, as opposed to getting them into a fast, comfortable cruising speed, always have the lowest ROI\'s. Good examples are Robbie Davis, Edgar Prado, Jose Santos, and Alex Solis. Again, with Bailey the info is out there, so he does not present the players with many great wagering oportunities, but when you get a rider change from Solis to Desormeaux, or Santos to Velazquez, great wagering opportunities arise. This does not mean I do not bet Prado or Santos ever; they often come up with brilliant rides in longer distance races, especially on the turf. More often than not, however, I find that their horses must be at least a few lengths faster than JD\'s or JR\'s for them to win the race ........... just one guys opinion .... As for the ROTW analysis, I thought it was brilliant. Unfortunately, I did not think GM would fire his best race going a mile and a sixteenth, so I went with the Frankel horse. Tough loss since my only bet was a big double with the horse who won the race before

[HP]

I wouldn\'t say you\'re wrong, but you\'re \'adding it in\' to the numbers and I find when I do this it hurts more than it helps.

I put the jockeys way below the trainers. You would have to remind me of the last horse Velasquez rode that paid more than $20. When I started using figures it helped to beat the guys that were betting Cordero and whoever else was hot, which they did regardless of who they were riding. The names have changed and not much else.

As far as rating goes, you can\'t believe that the jockeys make these decisions. Of your examples, Prado has made a real dent in NY, which is no small feat; Santos, despite the rips he\'s gotten on these boards is enjoying a big comeback; and Davis is about what he always is, 12% and I\'ll bet him every time he\'s got the horse I like. Solis I don\'t know enough.

If it works, more power to you. Cheers. HP

[Michael D.]

Voodoo, this w/e....
Prado\'s dent in NY includes an ROI of about 1.6, the Santos comeback gets you about the same, and Robbie Davis might get you 1.65. JR\'s ROI is always close to 1.9, which in % terms, is a huge difference. Trust me, you are better off betting JR than the other three. (or trust Tabor, Godolphin, Phipps, and the other top outfits in the world that are in the process of making JR their number one US rider). In fact, I actually use the opposite strategy as the one you mentioned; I often use the jockeys to beat the die hard sheet users.