Breeders' Cup Betting: Hard Way to Make an Easy Living
by Steve Davidowitz | Nov 11 2011
At the top of the stretch in the
Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday at Churchill Downs, I was starting to count my money. At the time, I figured I had lots of it to count. GAME ON DUDE (a very generous 13-1 shot) was in the lead and opening up on the Classic field which was heading to the final furlong of the 1-1/14 mile Classic, a $5 million race that would complete the 28th running of the Breeders’ Cup.
Chantal Sutherland was riding in perfect form. She had the 4-yr-old son of Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Awesome Again in the clear, with no rivals seemingly in the picture.
The highly touted UNCLE MO was tiring as expected after pressing the pace for a mile. World traveler SO YOU THINK was sputtering in his first try on a dirt track after he had tracked the leaders along the inside through the final turn.
The good 4-yr-old filly HAVRE DE GRACE was racing as if she was over the top, going nowhere fast, failing to show the late spark of her six previous races in 2011. She was not going to win it.
Jockey Club Gold Cup winner FLAT OUT, who had been a consistent sort in top company all year, was gaining ground so slowly that he did not seem to be a serious threat.
Pennsylvania Derby winner TO HONOR AND SERVE was retreating; so was Travers winner STAY THIRSTY and Hawthorne Gold Cup winner HEADACHE, while the 2010 Florida Derby winner ICE BOX (off form for a year) was showing no sign of life, going through the motions far from contention just as he had in several races leading up to the Classic. RATTLESNAKE BRIDGE, second to Stay Thirsty in the Travers, was performing as if he did not belong in this very rich, very important race, falling completely out of contention.
Just then I noticed that RULER ON ICE, winner of the 2011 Belmont Stakes, was rallying from way back and it began to look as if he might complete the exacta, which also would mean a bundle to me. Like I said, I was starting to count my money.
But, my euphoria was short lived as Trevor Denman, the great southern California based track announcer who was calling the Breeders’ Cup races, was among the first to notice that DROSSELMEYER, was rallying on the far outside as if he had just come “from nowhere.”
Where he came from, as far as I was concerned, was Horseplayer’s Hell.Drosselmeyer, winner of the 2010 Belmont Stakes and nary a Graded stakes before or since, was gaining ground as he never had done before, gaining steadily on Game on Dude, passing him inside the final 1/16 miles as if he was in a one horse race, stopping my money count in a few fifths of a second, turning my pot of gold into just another batch of losing pari mutual tickets.
Before the horses galloped out past my station on the press box level, about 60 feet above the ground a few yards past the finish line, I heard myself say something that many horseplayers, many professional gamblers probably have uttered in their sleep: “Man, this is a hard way to make an easy living!”
Frankly, playing the horses professionally never has been and never will be easy and no race in my recent memory illustrated the point better than the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Here was a nationally important race in which I had formulated a solid opinion on every horse in the race; had reached into my pocket to back my opinion with a substantial bet on a 13-1 shot that seemed to me to be closer to a 3-1 shot, given that he had trained perfectly for the situation by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert.
After all, this was a horse who already had proven his worthiness at the Breeders’ Cup Classic 10 furlong distance, a horse I knew would be in front of the pack, a tough horse to catch, a horse who seemed to be a near perfect horse in this specific race, going off at a very generous price.
But at 13-1 odds of winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic? I felt as if I was legally stealing money.
So, when the dose of reality hit me between the eyes, when the dust on the track settled, I kept seeing Drosselmeyer rally widest of all under the guidance of Hall of Famer Mike Smith, realizing that Smith was not only in the process of inflicting a wound to me or to jockey Chantal Sutherland (Smith’s former fiancé), but he was completing a story arc the likes of which Breeders’ Cup racing never has seen.
Flashing back to 2010 at this very track, with so much on the line for Smith and his mount last year, the great race mare ZENYATTA, I remembered Smith tasting and personally taking to his heart the narrow defeat to BLAME in that Classic. Now, in the post race press conference last Saturday, Smith was washing away some of the sting of that defeat with this victory aboard the unlikely Drosselmeyer.
Good for him. Good for his extraordinary trainer Billy Mott. Good for the people who actually saw merit in Drosselmeyer, or were smart enough to hook him in exactas and trifectas with Game On Dude.
They were the ones counting the money at the end of the day. So be it. So another longshot winner scored on this wild and wooly Saturday Breeders’ Cup card. Results like this one happen to every horseplayer more often than many of us would like to admit. But we stubbornly take solace from the victories we enjoy and we learn to live with the tough defeats.
As tough as the game is, it is the best gambling game man has ever invented. Yet, to really be successful, you never can accept bad outcomes as par for the course. Instead, you have to learn that there is value in accurately handicapping a race that does not quite end the way you saw it in advance. You have to know there will be more good horses to bet, more opportunities down the road where we can take more legit shots at juicy payoffs.
While the Breeders’ Cup only comes around once a year, I can’t blame anyone to who tells time by it: Next year, at virtually this same time of year, we will be at
Santa Anita Park for Breeders’ Cup number 29. I plan to be there… and I will be ready.
The 2011 Breeders’ Cup World Championships is in the books, but the season isn’t over yet!
Get ready for more online horse racing at Bodog Racebook.
