Derby Diary

[Horny Harry]

Wednesday, May 1
LOUISVILLE - The first morning you spend on the Churchill Downs backstretch during Derby Week is usually a heavy favorite to get you excited about the race. After pondering the race from afar for so long, seeing the horses and their handlers up close and drinking in the mood and the buzz beneath the Twin Spires is almost guaranteed to energize and inspire you.
Not this year. It feels in person just like it looks on paper - thoroughly interesting as a handicapping exercise but utterly confusing and uninspiring.
There is a palpable lack of confidence, clarity and awe surrounding this 128th Kentucky Derby. It's a year where no one knows what he has and everyone is taking a shot. There's not a horse in the field who has the complete package of talent, stamina and achievement. The ones who have accomplished the most are uncertain to thrive under the race conditions and the ones who look like they might handle it still have to prove that they've got the sheer ability.
Almost everyone believes there are at least half a dozen horses who simply don't belong in the race, but everyone's afraid to knock them because there's a feeling that anyone who improves can jump up and win this thing. People who usually are 1-to-5 to pick an obvious favorite are overreaching for clever longshots. The first half-dozen people I ran into this morning whose opinion I respect picked six different horses, none of them named Harlan's Holiday, Buddha, Medaglia d'Oro, Came Home or Saarland. It's almost getting tempting to become a level-two wiseguy, a contrarian to the contrarians, and box the five favorites.
The only news of the morning seemed to be that Mayakovsky is not going to run, which means that Windward Passage gets in as #20 and Sunday Break is out of the race. The graded-stakes earnings system clearly doesn't work when a non-competitive loser like It'sallinthechase gets in and a horse beaten a length in the Wood Memorial is excluded.
It'sallinthechase is one of the worst horses ever to contest a Kentucky Derby and may well make history here Saturday. We should get used to seeing bigger prices than ever now that there are up to 20 betting interest in the Derby, but this colt could set a new standard. He was 147-1 when he was trounced in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and has confirmed that stellar form in his subsequent starts. He could be the Derby's first 300-1 shot, and he'd be an underlay. I was delighted for parimutuel purposes when he clunked along for third at 52-1 in the painfully slow Louisiana Derby, and that performance ended up earning him a Derby berth.
There is no conceivable way that a rational person could make any case for him. He has run 14 times, winning twice (both at Remington Park), and not one of his performances has earned a Beyer Speed Figure of better than 90 or hinted at a glimmer of improvement ahead. On Saturday we will find out how much money is bet truly at random or by accident on the Derby.
I have to make a "pick" for Saturday's paper by 6 p.m. today and I'm pretty sure it's going to be Saarland. I will do so with two serious reservations. First and foremost, his price. He could be as low as 8-1 and he's no bargain in that range. Other people think he could be as high as 20-1, but I make the over/under at about 12.
Second, I am absolutely taking him on the come - on the basis of what I think and hope he will do as opposed to his past performances to date. In fact, I have bet against both him and everyone else (Nokoma, Listen Here, Monthir) coming out of last fall's highly overrated Remsen ever since, and that has turned out to be a profitable angle as that group has gone about a combined 1 for 15.
So why embrace him now? Some combination of the following: Likelihood of thriving at 10 furlongs; appropriate pedigree; superior trainer; sneaky-good come-home in the Wood; suspicion that the Wood was the deepest and fastest prep race; third start of the year; possibility of improvement after recent minor throat surgery; strong possibility that his best races are in front of him.
This diary would not be complete without reference to where I am staying this week. After 20 years of sampling the hotels of downtown Louisville, I decided to try something different and undertake some research into the burgeoning gaming industry. So I am spending five nights at the world's largest riverboat casino. You probably knew there were Caesar's hotels in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City, but did you know a fourth has opened across the river from Louisville at what I assume is the newly-christened Avenue Of The Emperors in Elizabeth, Indiana?
Apparently, Indiana law pretends that it's a historic boat ride and not a floating casino and you can only "board" every two hours for a scheduled "sailing." In any event, they have 2,500 slot machines and 140 table games I won't be patronizing, but there is a poker room so I shall furnish a complete report in tomorrow's diary.

[Horny Harry]

Tuesday, April 30
People who were making or buying speed figures a generation ago often claim that was a golden age that has sadly passed. They wax about bygone days when top-fig horses routinely went off at double-digit prices and moan that today such horses are always favored.
Are they right? Consider the last two Beyer Speed Figures of the following five Kentucky Derby entrants:
Horse A 98 101
Horse B 105 106
Horse C 105 107
Horse D 112 98
Horse D has the layover top figure. Horses B and C have each fired a strong pair. Horse A must be some hapless longshot, right?
Wrong. Horse A is Harlan's Holiday, the favorite for the Kentucky Derby. Horses B and C, Buddha and Medaglia d'Oro, will take less money. Horse D, War Emblem, will be at least 15-1, perhaps twice that price.
Rarely if ever has there been such dissonance between the likely odds and the figs - anyone's figs. No matter what measuring stick or scale of numbers you use, no matter what adjustments you make for pace or weight or ground lost, the Illinois Derby(War Meblem's 112) and the Wood Memorial (Buddha by a head over Medaglia d'Oro, earning each a 105) come up much faster races than Harlan's Holiday's victories in the Florida Derby(101) and Blue Grass(98).
The Santa Anita Derby only adds to the confusion. Came Home ran his record to 7-for-8 with a drawing-away 2 1/4-length victory but the race earned a horrendous figure of 96. Yet he is expected to go off as the fourth choice and in the same neighborhood of prices as Buddha and Medaglia d'Oro.
What we have this year as perhaps never before is a complete disconnect between the figures and "traditional" handicapping.
On figures alone, Harlan's Holiday looks horrible. Strip the figures out of his past performances, however, and he looks like he shouldn't run worse than second. His record is a sterling 10: 6-4-0. He won two of the spring's four biggest preps by daylight, widening his advantage through the stretch. He has tactical speed and makes the kind of middle moves that win Derbies.
Conversely, without their figures, Buddha and Medaglia d'Oro inspire little confidence. Both might be viewed as lightly-raced overachievers who must have gotten lucky to run one-two a head apart in the Wood in only their fourth career starts. As for War Emblem, without that one freakish figure, he would be 50-1 only because Bob Baffert now trains him and he'd be 100-1 if Frank Springer still had him.
So what's a horseplayer to do? That's what we need to figure out between now and Saturday in assessing their chance of victory relative to their odds, but here are some preliminary thoughts.
Even if he drifts to as high as 5-1 favorite, isn't Harlan's Holiday a horse you're supposed to try to beat? How often does the Derby favorite not only have no edge on figures but also come up just plain slower than half a dozen others?
Buddha and Medaglia d'Oro have such uncannily similar past performances that you wonder if they're clones. Each lost his debut in a sprint, then won his second start, a sprint, impressively; then launched a figure of 106 or 107 when stretched out to a mile and a sixteenth; then practically dead-heated in the Wood. If you like one, you have to like both.
War Emblem poses an entirely different problem: the one-fig syndrome. Off his entire previous career he's a complete throwout. The Illinois Derby was a suspect affair. The other front-runner in the field, One Tuff Fox, was scratched 90 minutes before post time, leaving War Emblem to lope to an easy lead. Repent, the distant runner-up as the odds-on favorite, came out of the race with an injury. Conventional wisdom says that if anyone else breathes on War Emblem early, as several surely will in the Derby, he can't run anything like that 112 again.
Still, is it entirely beyond the realm of possibility that he's blossomed into a killer, that he doesn't need the lead and runs the same relaxed half-mile in 48 1/5 that he did in Sportsman's and finishes just as well?
Less likely than not. If there were a horse-for-horse even-money wager between Harlan's Holiday and War Emblem, I'd take Harlan's Holiday for as much as I could get down. But that's not the proposition here. If the top fig really were always the favorite, I'd toss War Emblem in a heartbeat at 5-to-1. At five times that price, I have an open mind.

[Horny Harry]

With a mere five shopping days until the 128th Kentucky Derby, I have no idea who will win the race. I don't expect to figure it out between now and Saturday. I don't really have to, because no matter what happens the race will have been an extraordinary wagering opportunity in which I had an advantage, and that's all you can ever ask.
By the time that the horses walk into the Churchill Downs paddock for the big race, my work will be done and my bets will be down. How I have played the race will have been decided half an hour earlier, when there will have been enough money in the mutual pools that the prices are not going to change substantially. Those odds will be the final and most important piece of the puzzle of betting the 128th Kentucky Derby. The public will have spoken, and I will have played against them where I think they are wrong.
Notice that I have not said anything about liking any particular horse. I don't. I'm a racing fan in the sporting sense and thus fascinated to see who will emerge from the race as the top 3-year-olds and what happens to them next. As a bettor, though, only one thing interests me: What prices the horses will be and how those prices compare to my assessment of each horse's chances.
This may sounds cold-blooded to you, but think about who you "like" and see if you're so sure that price has nothing to do with it. Let's say you're a Harlan's Holiday fan. Nice honest racehorse, always fires, won the Florida Derby and the Blue Grass by open lengths. What's not to like? Okay, how much do you want to bet if he's 2-1? Probably not a penny. At that price, it suddenly seems more relevant that his speed figures and his come-home times are on the slow side of mediocre and that he's no cinch to love 10 furlongs. At 2-1 in a 20-horse field he's a ridiculous underlay and any sensible horseplayer would take a strong position against him.
He won't be anything like 2-1, probably closer to 9-2. Do you like him now? Maybe, maybe not. Whether you know it or not, you have a price in your mind that reflects your opinion of how often he would win this race, given what we know about the contestants at this point, if it were run 100 times. If you think the number is 20, then anything over 4-to-1 is a good bet. Now let's say he's 8-1. You love it, right? Me too. But I don't think we're getting 8-1 Saturday.
This is the sort of thought process that should govern any of the 60,000 races available for betting each year, but the Derby is different. We're not talking about a race on a Thursday afternoon where only regular players are setting the odds. The Derby attracts tens of millions of dollars, much of it from people who have no idea whether a given horse should be 2-1 or 8-1 and, fortunately for the rest of us, don't really care. The 16 percent takeout on win prices is probably entirely offset by this influx of amateurism, making it a square proposition at worst.
But it gets better: It's about the only race of the year where you get more than 14 betting interests. These additional separate interests do nothing but attract money to horses with an infinitesimal chance of actually winning the race, most of whom go off at seemingly big but actually underlaid prices, further pumping the odds on the legitimate contenders.
The difference between 20 and 14 betting interests may not sound all that dramatic, but it turns out to be huge. Let's be charitable and say that the six worst horses in the field actually have a 1 percent chance each of winning the race. Each would have to be 100-1 for you to be getting a square price, but on average they'll be half that price. At 50-1, they're each taking 1.65 percent of the pool, or nearly 10 percent combined. It's like getting a 10 percent bonus on the price of each of the 14 others.
Look at the difference in prices between the 2000 Derby, which had a field of 19, and last year's, which numbered only 17 but had separate betting on each. Both races featured a favorite who took between 25 and 30 percent of the pool - Fusaichi Pegasus at 2-1 and Point Given at 9-5. After that, though, the races could not have been more different. In 2000, there was a three-horse entry, a two-horse entry, and a parimutuel field for a total of 13 betting interests. Only two horses went off at better than 25-1.
Last year, with just an increase from 13 to 17 betting interests, seven horses went off at over 30-1, yet no one was higher than 102-1. The money eaten up by these horses created inviting prices on perfectly logical alternatives to the favorite, such as Congaree at 7-1, Monarchos at 10-1 and A P Valentine at 19-1.
The effects of additional betting interests are even more deeply felt in the multiple pools. With 13 betting interests, there are 156 possible exactas and 1,716 trifecta combinations. With 17 betting interests, those numbers go to 272 and 4,080, and with 20 you have your choice of 380 exactas or 6,840 tris. Eliminating underlaid longshots becomes even more valuable since they will appear in the minor slots on multiple tickets even more frequently than their already mistaken odds would suggest.
It's all just too good to pass up, even if the race seems unusually tough. The other tough thing is screening out all the entertaining but largely irrelevant distractions of the week - things like the post-position draw, the times of the final morning blowouts, how the track is playing in the days leading up to the race. Consider all this noise as distraction for your competition - the people making those prices you will be betting against on Saturday afternoon.

[Horny Harry]

Buddha takes to the track
By MIKE WELSCH
Horsephotos
Buddha got his first feel of the Churhill Downs track on Wednesday.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - With all the serious preperations for Saturday's Kentucky Derby now complete, Wednesday was merely a maintenance day for Derby contenders, all of whom either jogged, galloped, or walked the shed row.
The primary source of interest Wednesday morning was the first local appearance of Buddha, who did not arrive on the grounds until the previous day. Catching a glimpse of the Wood Memorial winner on the racetrack meant putting in a very early wake up call as trainer Jim Bond sent Buddha out in the first set shortly after the track opened for business at 5:45 a.m.
Even in the dark Buddha made an excellent appearance, his dapples readily apparent in the dim light near the finish line as he stood almost motionless alongside Bond's stable pony for 10 minutes, seemingly undaunted by his new surroundings. He then proceeded to jog a quarter-mile before breaking into a 1 1/4-mile gallop looking relaxed and comfortable with the surface while continuing along at a good clip before being pulled up in the vicinity of the half-mile pole.
Buddha looks like a million bucks and seemingly shows no ill effects from his hard effort in the Wood or long van ride from New York.
Request for Parole appeared a bit short strided during his Tuesday gallop but seemed more fluid when allowed to stretch his legs and two-minute lick from the three-eighths to the seven-eighths pole on Wednesday.
Came Home expended very little energy on his first day back to the track since Monday's five furlong work, his once around jog under exercise rider du jour Chris McCarron interrupted by a brief walk through the paddock.
Trainer Steve Asmussen sent Private Emblem and Windward Passage out for a once around gallop from the half-mile pole, with Private Emblem again making a strong appearance circling the one-mile oval with his neck elegantly bowed. Saarland continues to look good while Blue Burner had an energetic 1 1/4-mile gallop after visiting the paddock simultaneously with Proud Citizen.
The lone Oaks worker of the day was You, who breezed an easy three furlongs from the quarter to the seven-eighths pole immediately after the renovation break. Has trained as well as anyone on the grounds over the past week. Oaks longshot Farda Amiga turned in a strong gallop shortly before daybreak.

[imaufo]

Buddha is now scratched from the Derby after sufferring a stone bruise.
here is a link to an article found on a Hong Kong site re the Derby / Laffit Pincay.
http://racing.scmp.com/english/free/news/news.asp

[imaufo]

From: MattGloss Sent: 4/05/2002 12:17 PM
Post Position Horse Trainer Jockey Sire Morning Line
1 Johannesburg Aidan O'Brien Gary Stevens Hennessy 6-1
2 Wild Horses Todd Pletcher Rene Douglas Saint Ballado 50-1
3 Perfect Drift Murray Johnson Eddie Delahoussaye Dynaformer 15-1
4 Lusty Latin Jeff Mullins Glenn Corbett El Prado 30-1
5 War Emblem Bob Baffert Victor Espinoza Our Emblem 20-1
6 Ocean Sound (Ire) James Cassidy Alex Solis Mujadil 50-1
7 Request For Parole Steve Margolis Robby Albarado Judge T.C. 20-1
8 Essence Of Dubai Saeed bin Suroor David Flores Pulpit 15-1
9 Medaglia d'Oro Robert Frankel Laffit Pincay, Jr. El Prado 6-1
10 Buddha SCR SCR SCR SCR
11 Private Emblem Steve Asmussen Donnie Meche Our Emblem 20-1
12 Castle Gandolfo Aidan O'Brien Jerry Bailey Gone West 20-1
13 Proud Citizen Wayne Lukas Mike Smith Gone West 30-1
14 Harlan's Holiday Ken McPeek Edgar Prado Harlan 9-2
15 Came Home Paco Gonzalez Chris McCarron Gone West 5-1
16 Saarland Shug McGaughey John Velazquez Unbridled 15-1
17 Danthebluegrassman Bob Baffert Kent Desormeaux Pioneering 50-1
18 It'sallinthechase Wilson Brown Eddie Martin, Jr. Take Me Out 50-1
19 Easy Grades Ted H. West Jorge Chavez Honor Grades 20-1
20 Blue Burner Bill Mott Pat Day French Deputy 30-1
I'll stick with Perfect Drift and Castle Gandolfo. Mind you Tabor is very confident with Johannesburg.