Andy Beyer | Horse Racing Free Tips

60 Speakers Announced For Global Symposium on Racing

Over 60 speakers will present at the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program's 49th annual Global Symposium on Racing, scheduled for Dec. 4-6 at Lowes Ventana Canyon in Tuscon. The event brings together racing industry executives from around the world to explore critical issues and trends across the three racing breeds.

Panels at the 2023 Symposium will include:

Computer Assisted Wagering–The Good, The Bad, and The Future
Out of the Shadows–Shining a Spotlight on Mental Health and Emotional Wellness
The Path Forward–Race Track Safety and the Anti-Doping & Medication Control Program
Strengthening Your Simulcast Content–Maximizing Handle in Diverse International Betting Markets
From Data to Dollars–Understanding Horse Racing's Economic Impact as Racing's Future is Questioned
Land for Sale. How Will Race Track Closures Impact the Industry's Long-Term Sustainability?

One of the highlights of the Symposium will be the “Legends of the Game–Racing's Iconic Turf Writers” featuring esteemed journalists Steve Crist, Andy Beyer and Jay Privman.

Pre-conference sessions will set the stage for the Syposium's opening evening reception on Dec. 4 and will include:

HISA Workshop for State Regulators and Stewards
3rd Annual Racing Secretaries Summit
Track Surface Regulatory Requirements
NTRA Handicapping Contest Workshop

Prospective attendees are encouraged to register by Nov. 17 to take advantage of a $100 discount and Ventana Canyon is offering reduced room rates of $189 for attendees. Registration for the Symposium and hotel reservations can be completed at RacingSymposium.com, where a list of the speakers may also be found.

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Andy Beyer Joins TDN Writers’ Room to Handicap the Kentucky Derby

Andy Beyer, the longtime racing columnist for the Washington Post and the creator of the Beyer Speed Figures that appear in the Daily Racing Form, is never short of opinions, especially when it comes to who will win the GI Kentucky Derby. With the race right around the corner, we asked Beyer to give us his thoughts on the race and share his handicapping acumen on the TDN Writers' Room podcast, which is presented by Keeneland. Beyer was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

After some spirited and amusing debate about how to pronounce Forte's name, Beyer said he's no fan of that horse, saying that Forte (Violence) “won't hit the board.”

“I don't like him,” he said. “I don't like him because the name issue grates on me every time I hear it. He is not historically what we look for in the Kentucky Derby, which is a horse on the upgrade coming into the Derby. He clearly doesn't fit that profile. Yes, he is trained by Todd Pletcher. But as we know, Todd's forte is not training horses to win the Derby. His record in this race is two for 62. So I don't think you get any extra credit for being in the Pletcher barn in this race. I want no part of Forte. I don't think he'll hit the board.”

Then who does he like? It's Derma Sotogake (Jpn) (Mind Your Biscuits).

“I am looking for a history making Japanese victory on Saturday night with Derma Sotogake,” Beyer said. “It's not a great Derby. But what makes it really interesting to me is the Japanese presence. And I've been looking a lot at this and I think that Japan is really on the brink of becoming the number one power in world horse racing, eclipsing even Great Britain and the United States. It's going to happen at the present rate eventually. And the coming out party just might be Saturday.”

Beyer said he is so bullish on the Japanese horses that he even gave a long look to longshot Continuar (Jpn) (Drefong).

“I was going to pick Continuar as my 50 to 1 bomber just because he is trained by the top Japanese trainer and was really going to be under the radar,” Beyer said. “But he evidently has not trained that well since he's been at Churchill.”

Based on the Beyer figures, the field for the GI Kentucky Oaks is among the slowest ever. Predictably, Beyer didn't have anything good to say about that race.

“I was so depressed looking at the figures in the Oaks that I just haven't even focused on it yet,” he said. “The idea that nobody in that field has run a figure over 91 is just embarrassing. I've never seen a race this famous look so bad from the speed figure standpoint.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by Coolmore,https://lanesend.com/ the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, 1/st Racing, WinStar Farm, XBTV and https://www.threechimneys.com/ West Point Thoroughbreds, podcast regulars Zoe Cadman, Randy Moss and Bill Finley ran through the entire 20-horse field, giving their opinions on each starter. Finley picked Tapit Trice (Tapit) to win, Moss selected Derma Sotogoake and Cadman gave the nod to Practical Move (Practical Joke). As was the case with Beyer, none were particularly high on Forte.

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Speed Figure Pioneer Len Ragozin Dies

Len Ragozin, who started a handicapping revolution when inventing the Ragozin Sheets, passed away Thursday. He was 92.

Ragozin grew up in Manhattan, where he learned the game from his father, Harry, a textile production manager and a part-time horseplayer who developed his own speed figures. In the late 1960s, Ragozin went out on his own, refining his father's system. He began to publish The Sheets, which boiled a horse's performance down to a single number or speed figure. Ragozin found that he could combine final times, track condition, weight carried and ground lost into a number used to rate a horse's performance. He liked to look beyond the raw numbers and for form cycles and patterns, one of which became to be known as the “bounce theory.” Horses, he found, often regressed and run poorly after a particularly fast and taxing effort.

The Ragozin Sheets would soon become a popular tool for legions of followers, including horseplayers and owners and trainers, among them Bobby Frankel. In an era prior to the Internet and computer printouts, the Ragozin team entered a horse's numbers by hand on sheets of paper that were sold to customers.

“We're trying to find out the true value of a horse's performance,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1978. “In other words, when is a fast race really worse and when is a slow race really better?”

In a 1987 profile, The New Yorker had this to say about Ragozin: “In a profession crowded by shams and romantics, Ragozin looms like a Descartes–the supreme rationalist codifier.”

“Len was a trailblazer,” said Andy Beyer, whose popular speed figures are included in Daily Racing Form past performances. “He created a really strong following for his philosophy of the game. He made speed figures, we make speed figures, other people make speed figures. What was unique about him was the concept that you could look at pattern of numbers on a page and foretell a horse's form cycle. Most notable was his bounce theory.”

In 2012, he sold his business to Thoroughbred owner and breeder Steve Davision and a longtime employee of The Sheets, Jake Haddad. Davison, the majority owner of Twin Creeks Racing Stables LLC., called the Ragozin sheets “the premier speed figure producers in the Thoroughbred industry.”

Ragozin donated much of the proceeds from the sale to his Len Ragozin Foundation, which is devoted to progressive causes. According to his bio on the Ragozin Foundation website, the Harvard graduate was working for Newsweek during the Red Scare when he refused to inform on college classmates. He was denied a promotion because of his unwillingness to cooperate with the FBI, which prompted him to look for a new line of work and go into handicapping.

In 1997, he released his autobiography, titled “The Odds Must Be Crazy: Beating the Races With the Man Who Revolutionized Handicapping.”

Ragozin is survived by his sister, Nikki Keddie, his brother David Ragozin, a daughter, Alexa Manning, granddaughter, Adeline Manning, and ex-wife and longtime best friend Marion Buhagiar, who was with him during his final days. As he wished, Len was cremated without ceremony. No memorials are currently planned. Donations from friends and comrades who remember Len and share his ideals are welcome at the Len Ragozin Foundation (lenragozinfoundation.com).

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Andy Beyer Joins TDN Writers’ Room

As the Breeders’ Cup draws nearer, legendary author, columnist, figuremaker and handicapper Andy Beyer joined the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland this week. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Beyer discussed the future of playing the horses, what his action looks like these days and the evolution of speed figures over the years.

Asked about his early Breeders’ Cup opinions, Beyer understandably said he’s against the strong on hype, weak on numbers Princess Noor (Not This Time), who figures to be among the favorites in the Juvenile Fillies.

“The commentators on TV were just riding the Beyer Speed Figures, like, ‘How can this great horse only be getting figures in the 70’s?'” he said. “Todd Schrupp on TVG mentioned her in the same breath with Ruffian, which to me is sacrilege. But the fact is when I look at all of her races, the figures are solid as a rock. When she won her last race [the Chandelier] at Santa Anita, there was a really weak group of male 2-year-olds [in that day’s GI American Pharoah S.] going the same distance. You have a direct line of comparison and her time was just very mediocre, as with her other races, so I always believed in standing by right figures when I can and I’ll be betting against her in the Breeders’ Cup.”

On how his betting habits compare to a younger version of himself, Beyer said, “I bet much less. When I developed the figures I was just about the only person who had speed figures. I had as great an edge as a gambler could want from the mid-70s to the mid-90s. Now that speed figures are common currency and everybody has access to them, I don’t have that. I made hay while the sun shined, in those golden years. Plus there are elements of the modern game that I just don’t like. At the top of the list is the Rainbow 6 and those other copycat jackpot bets. There was nothing that got my juices flowing like a big carryover in a traditional Pick 6. But the jackpot bets are, to me, a sucker bet to fleece the average player. So I’m down on that.”

A longtime critic of drugs in racing and the lax regulatory approach that allows cheaters to prosper, Beyer admitted that he didn’t realize the depths of the alleged criminality that were revealed in this March’s FBI indictments of Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro.

“In all the years that I would write about super-trainers and guys whose performance seemed to defy logic, I had the notion that, the industry is just looking the other way, stewards aren’t cracking down,” he said. “We learned from the case earlier this year that it’s not as simple as that. This was a major criminal conspiracy, with people manufacturing sophisticated drugs, hiding the presence of those drugs in a sophisticated way. It took a year-long investigation by the FBI with wiretaps to nail the cheaters. This was not just a sneaky trainer and a sneaky vet, it was something that needed a major law enforcement effort. So I think the only answer to this problem is to bring in high-powered investigators. Within the industry itself, it wasn’t negligence, we just didn’t have the tools to keep the cheaters at bay.”

Elsewhere on the show, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, the writers discussed the recent string of medication positives coming out of the Bob Baffert barn and what they mean, then gave their first-blush impressions of the Breeders’ Cup pre-entries. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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