Filly and Mare Sprint - My Pick: Maryfield. Winner: Maryfield. I’ll never complain about hitting an $18.00 winner. The race set up almost exactly as I hoped it would. Dream Rush and La Traviata tried to kill each other on the front with a ridiculous pace, and that left it for the closers to pick up the scraps. Maryfield was the closer I liked, and she did me proud.

Juvenile Turf – My Pick: Gio Ponti. Winner: Nownownow. I spent about two seconds on this race, and really didn’t care that I didn’t win. The horses were from all over the place, the surface was terrible, and the experience of the runners was wildly varied. A handicapping nightmare. I had no emotional buy-in with my pick, and passed on the race.

Dirt Mile – My Pick: Gottcha Gold. Winner: Corinthian. I have no regrets here. Gottcha Gold got the lead and hung on nicely to the end in a Hard Spun-like effort. He was clearly the second best and would have won if it weren’t for Corinthian. I have thoroughly enjoyed Corinthian in his career and have won on him in the past. Unfortunately, I have lost on him more. He’s a hit or miss horse, and I bet that he would miss here.

Juvenile Fillies – My Pick: Izarra. Winner: Indian Blessing. I stayed away from the favorite (the winner) because I was concerned by the fact that, despite winning, she had slowed badly down the stretch in her last effort. I figured that that would set the race up well for Izarra. She was a powerful closer, and though she hadn’t run on dirt before I hoped that she would take to it well. Despite the fact that the opportunity for a strong close was present (Indian Blessing did the last two furlongs in a very pedestrian 27.1 seconds), Izarra didn’t fire and ended up tenth. Whether it was the dirt or the weather, it just wasn’t her day.

Juvenile – My Pick: Pyro. Winner: War Pass. I am totally happy with this pick. Pyro had finished an impressive second to War Pass in the Champagne, and I was confident that those were the two best horses in this field. I liked both, but I went with Pyro based on his price and on the fact that I though War pass may have been burned out by a pace challenge. That pace challenge didn’t materialize, War Pass was able to run his race, and my horse was clearly second best. A fine result in a race this tough to call.

Filly and Mare Turf - My Pick: Passage of Time. Winner: Lahudood. Not a lot to complain about here, as my three horses made up the trifecta. I took a shot on Passage of Time because she had solid form and because her trainer was emphatic throughout the week that she would be happier the softer the ground got. I stuck with the pick, but would have moved away from it near post time if I could have because passage of Time was made the favorite at an underlay, while Honey Ryder and Lahudood were both attractive overlays. Excluding the odds, though, I’m happy with my logic.

Sprint - My Pick: Smokey Stover. Winner: Midnight Lute. My horse didn’t fire at all and was eased before the finish line. Clearly the surface was a disaster. Though there’s nothing I could do about that, I do have to admit one big error here. I had completely ruled out Midnight Lute, not even including him in my trifecta. I didn’t believe in his ability to replicate his monster performance in the Forego, and I thought there was absolutely no value in the price. His move down the stretch was truly monstrous, and I didn’t give him nearly enough credit.

Mile – My Pick: Nobiz Like Shobiz. Winner: Kip Deville. This is another race where, like the F&M Turf, I made a pick based on morning lines that I wouldn’t have made at the post time odds. I didn’t believe that Nobiz was the best horse in the field currently, but I love his potential, and I thought that he was a nice overlay at 8-1. When he went off at less than 4-1 I felt a sense of inevitable doom. I have nothing to complain about with his effort – he ran a career best Beyer and finished fourth. I just wouldn’t have made the pick if he’d been 4-1 in the morning line. Of course, it all doesn’t matter, because Kip Deville would never have been my pick anyway, and I thought that the favorite, Excellent Art, who finished second, was a bet-against. This just wasn’t my race.

Distaff - My Pick: Lady Joanne. Winner: Ginger Punch. If I could have found an eight sided coin I would have used it to handicap this race. There were eight horses in the 12 horse field that I liked for one reason or another, and I found it very difficult to separate any of them. In the end I went with Lady Joanne because she had a nice price and she has consistently been in the money. She finished fourth. The top six horses were all in my eight, so I really can’t complain too much.

Turf - My Pick: Dylan Thomas. Winner: English Channel. I messed this one up (Dylan Thomas was fifth), but I didn’t know how to get away from it. Over the week before I had repeatedly written that I thought that Dylan Thomas was primed to be beaten because of the challenge of coming off the Arc to win here. Despite that, I ended up going with him. In part I got taken in by the hype, and in part I just couldn’t find a better option. I discredited English Channel because of the ground, and thought that Dylan Thomas would handle the ground because he won over a soft ground at the Arc (upon further research after the race I found that the ground at the Arc was soft but drying – oops). Unwilling to back English Channel at his price, there was no one else that I felt good enough about, so I went with Dylan Thomas pretty much by default. Certainly the pick I feel the least proud of.

Classic – My Pick: Curlin. Winner: Curlin. I made my pick for the BC Classic on Preakness day when Curlin beat Street Sense, and I blindly stuck with it since then. I love this horse and was thrilled with his performance. I looked very closely at this race, but it was only to pick my other two horses, because there was virtually nothing that would have moved me off my top pick.

Overall - My top picks in the 11 races ended up winning twice and finishing second twice. $2 win bets on all 11 horses would have netted a profit of $6.80 and an ROI of 30.9%. $2 place bets on all 11 races were also profitable, with a net of $3 and an ROI of 13.6%. It wasn’t a dominating weekend, but it was a reasonably successful one and I can’t be too disappointed given the conditions. Most importantly, there is only one pick – Dylan Thomas – that I wish I had to do all over again. That makes for a good day, and it means I can’t wait until next year.

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It is truly ugly in New Jersey for the Breeders’ Cup. There are unconfirmed reports that Sheik Mohammed has ordered an ark to be built. When doing your final handicapping for the big day there’s really only one thing to remember: DON’T OVERTHINK IT. The weather is a mess, but it is just one factor that makes handicapping these races as difficult as it is. Just have fun. The horses that won today were, for the most part, good enough to win on a dry track.

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• Friday’s races
  
• Juvenile
• Juvenile Fillies
• Filly and Mare Turf
• Sprint
• Mile
• Distaff
• Turf
• Classic

There are also a few articles I did for fun and to try to make the time until the first race pass faster:

• Ranking the favorites
• The things that didn’t fit in other articles

I’ll weigh in on this topic again before post time. Which, incidentally, is 158,400 seconds from now. Not that I’m counting.

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The Devil is here on earth, and his name is TSN!

For those of you who aren’t Canadian, TSN is Canada’s foremost sports network. It tries hard to be ESPN, but, unlike ESPN, TSN is mostly terrible. For the most part I don’t really care. Once in a while, though, they do something to infuriate me. Now is such a time.

Somehow, these morons got the rights to the Breeders’ Cup. This happened for the first time last year, coinciding with the move to ESPN in the U.S. Last year they put the broadcast on some obscure cable network that very few homes receive. They said it would be better this year. As one would expect from the Devil, they lied.

The broadcast of the eight races on October 27 will be shown only on an alternate feed. That feed is not available to a huge number of cable subscribers, and misses entire markets (like mine – the fourth biggest city in the country). Even if it is available it is hidden in such an obscure corner of the channel lineup that most people will never know it is there. People certainly won’t happen upon this, the biggest day of racing of the year, accidentally. They will, however, be able to catch the Busch series race in its entirety. I know that all Canadians have not yet discovered their love of horse racing, but I also know for a fact that the appetite for the minor leagues of NASCAR is no more voracious.

If TSN doesn’t want to treat the Breeders’ Cup with the respect it deserves (and they won’t because it isn’t hockey, and TSN only cares about hockey), then the least they could do is give up the rights so that people can actually watch it on another network. Morons.

My fingers are on the verge of bleeding from all of the letters of complaint I have written to TSN in the last day. If you are in Canada, or even if you aren’t but you like sending angry letters, then do me a huge favor and go here and give these fools the hard time that they deserve. I know it will do us no good, but at least they will get a sense of the disgust that I am not alone in feeling.

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• I have watched Curlin win the Jockey Club Gold Cup over Lawyer Ron several times over the last few days (I’m such a geek that I have the video loaded onto my iPod for portable viewing pleasure). Two things stick out from my admittedly biased position. First, Lawyer Ron didn’t like being caught at all. If you watch his ears they drop back when he is caught – a sign, in my mind, that he gave up. It’s a decidedly amateur theory, but I’m not sure that horses, being herd animals, bounce back from that very well. Second, that’s just a gutsy performance. Curlin could have given up when Lawyer Ron began to pull away with a furlong left. The fact that he had another run left makes me very high on this horse.
• Speaking of Curlin, Bodog has Futures odds available on the Classic, and he is at 5/1. If you like the horse you might want to take a look – that’s a better price by quite a bit than you are likely to get on race day. Lawyer Ron is the current favorite at 7/2 (he should be at least that good on race day), and Street Sense is at 6/1.
• Alan at Left at the Gate (the best racing blog there is, by the way), talks about something I noticed, too. War pass, the undefeated winner of the Champagne on Saturday, is a potential favorite in the Juvenile, but I’m not buying it. First, the Champagne is a lousy BC prep, and the horse has never gone two turns, but more importantly, he won the Champagne with a last quarter mile of 25.88 seconds. If your not a hardcore horse racing fan here’s what you need to know about that – it is painfully slow. He won because the pace set up well for him, but he won’t win against the best in the country if that’s the best he can do in 17 days. Like Alan, I will happily throw him out at anything but a shockingly high price on race day.
• I pay much less attention to European racing than I probably should, so each year at this time I have a ton of catching up to do so I am ready for the races run on turf (a job made much, much easier thanks to Youtube). The Prix de la Foret, run last Saturday, was to be the last test for several top candidates for the BC Mile. All it did, though, was create a mess. There’s no audio in this clip, but the horse that absolutely smashes the field is called Toylsome, and he went off at 100/1. Oops. So much for gaining insight into the BC field from that race. There will be a lot of re-evaluating to do among the camps of the top horses after that disaster – it doesn’t look like the weather or the track were to blame. Favored Tariq was fifth, and Linngari, a previously well-respected BC potential entrant, was ninth:

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There’s a very interesting post about the Kentucky Derby champion over at Handride. Basically, Patrick is not a believer. His argument is sound – Grasshopper almost beat Street Sense in the Travers, and then he was completely exposed in (not-so) Super Derby last weekend. Any Given Saturday also ran close to the Derby champ in Tampa Bay in the spring, and has turned into a bit of a wonder horse now. Though I don’t agree that Street Sense will flame out in the Kentucky Cup Classic and be retired before he heads to Monmouth at the end of the month, I do think that Street Sense is getting more credit now than he deserves, that he will be bet down at the Breeders’ Cup (assuming he wins his last prep in Kentucky), and that the amount of attention he gets will open up the possibility of betting on other horses because their prices will be higher than they otherwise would be.

UPDATE: Patrick must have been on to something. Street Sense was never able to get past Hard Spun in the Kentucky Cup Classic and wound up second in the four horse field. Now we’ll have to see what decision his owners make in the next week or two.

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