Bill Finley | Horse Racing Free Tips

Andy Serling Joins The TDN Writers’ Room

With Saratoga opening, NYRA TV Analyst and Handicapper Andy Serling will be ultra busy over the next seven plus weeks, spending countless hours on every card as he tries to pick winners and give his viewers valuable betting advice. But he's not complaining. It's hard to imagine anyone who loves Saratoga more. To talk about the meet, Serling joined the team on this week's TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland. Serling, who has been attending the meet on a regular basis since 1975, was the Green Group Guest of the Week.

When asked if Saratoga will surpass last year's record when $878 million was bet on the meet, Serling said it all depends on the weather. Only 17 races were taken off the turf last year.

“You don't want to sit around and say we're going to do as well or better than we did last year because weather is going to play a major role in that,” Serling said. “But I don't see anything happening that's going to severely negatively affect us. There are weather situations where it rains a decent amount and it's especially a problem if it happens on Saturdays. But other than that, there's a great interest in Saratoga. It remains a place that people just love to go to. So there's no reason not to be optimistic or hopeful that things will go well. But you don't want to get caught up in that because we're geniuses when the weather's good and we're idiots when the weather's bad. Saratoga is a magical place and it seems to continue to do well regardless of what the environment is.”

One race he will be keeping his eye on is the one for the riding title. Irad Ortiz, Jr. was an easy winner last year, but it was his brother, Jose, who won the title at the Belmont spring meet.

“I think it's a very friendly rivalry between Jose and Irad,” he said. “Irad has won four of the last eight and Jose has won three of them. To suggest it's not likely to come down to these two guys is unlikely. Now, this is the first full summer that Jose has been with agent Steve Rushing. He was with Jimmy Riccio before. I wouldn't count Luis Saez out because he's been riding at Churchill and if some of these Churchill trainers do well that he's riding for I think he will have a chance to win it for the second time. Flavien Prat, Joel Rosario are guys who have a chance. I just don't know that they'll get the same kind of mounts to be able to win a jockey title. They might win a lot of stakes. They might win bigger races, but it's tough to go past the two Ortiz brothers.”

As for the trainers, it appears this will be another year where the race comes down to Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher.

“It's going to probably come down to those two guys, Todd and Chad, and it'll probably hinge really on how many good two year olds they have, how many maiden races they win,” Serling said. “Pletcher is capable and we've seen in the past his winning a boatload of maiden races. If he doesn't, he's not going to compete for the title. But the other thing is that one thing that Todd is exceptionally good at is being prepared for off the turf. Todd is usually in there with somebody and it's something that he usually has an advantage on. Chad's strength is often turf racing. So if we get a lot of rain, they come off the turf, it's going to cost Chad.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, NYRABets.com, WinStar Farm, XBTV.com and West Point Thoroughbreds, the team of Bill Finley, Randy Moss and Zoe Cadman talked about what was a rocky week for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) and whether or not the way it and the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) has been dealing with those who had positive tests for banned substances is a case of “guilty until proven innocent.” There was a review of last week's big races, including the win by Reincarnate (Good Magic) in the Los Alamitos Derby. The team also focused on the story of jockey 61-year-old Cindy Murphy. Murphy won the July 8 GIII Iowa Oaks aboard Crypto Mo (Mohaymen), which was both her 2,000th career victory and her first-ever win in a graded stakes race.

Click here for the audio-only version.

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Pat Cummings Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast

Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW) has been a hot topic of late. What we know is that there are a handful gamblers that use computer algorithms to formulate their wagers, are allowed to make their bets at the very last second and receive substantial rebates. But there's a lot we don't know, like how much are they betting, what pools they most prefer and what affect has that had on the “regular” player? In his latest report for the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation (TIF), entitled Sharks & Minnows, TIF Executive Director Pat Cummings dug into the issue. To find out more about his findings, the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland was joined this week by Cummings. He was the Green Group Guest of the Week.

Using data from Del Mar, Cummings concluded that CAW players are betting more each year and that the amount of betting from “everyone else” is declining.

“Not only are the sharks growing, but the minnows are declining,” he said. “For the first time in this paper, were able to really separate how the CAW play has grown and how all other customers have in almost every pool shrunk. Total handle figures are often marketed in the industry press releases, they're touted. It looks like on an annual basis that not a whole lot has changed. That's not telling us the accurate picture. For years now, the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation has wanted to really dive into who's betting, how are they betting, how are they participating and how is the market changing? What we're seeing now more clearly than ever before is what's happening with all other customers. We're talking about people that may bet $10 a year or maybe even $2 million a year. They are a smaller percentage of the pools and declining.”

When asked if this could lead to a “doomsday” scenario, whereby the “sharks” have driven all the “minnows” out of the game, Cummings said that is in fact a concern.

“I'd call it a real threat,” he said. “And I would suggest that some of the biggest sharks are eating some of the smaller ones too.”

He estimated that CAW players now account for 33% of the total handle in U.S. racing

Cummings is not in favor of banning CAW players. He recognizes that if they go away overall handle would plummet, which could be catastrophic. The answer he says is to find ways to level the playing field when it comes to the sharks versus the minnows, starting with the takeout.

“Takeout rates have not come down commensurate with all of this money coming in (from CAW players) at low price points and driven by technology,” he said. “That's the opposite experience that investors have had in almost all other areas, where we have seen costs for customers come crashing down. The days of the $35 stock commission are long gone. And yet 50, 60, maybe even 70% of all trading on the stock market now is high-frequency trading. Ordinary investors in 401Ks and IRAs, regular mutual fund holders, exchange traded funds, different products have been created to allow ordinary investors to buy and hold. And their costs have come down from where they were 20 years ago. We have not seen that same evolution in American horse racing wagering, which remains one of the most expensive gambles out there.”

Cummings also called on the industry to end all jackpot bets. He has found that not only do they keep money out of circulation by cutting down on churn, but that the CAW players often come in and take home a disproportionate amount of the pool at the expense of the regular player.

“If you run a parimutuel wagering business and your goal is to keep collecting commissions on parimutuel wagering, then why introduce a bet that limits the number of times that a customer can keep coming back to your window and churning their money?” he said. “You're going in the complete opposite direction to all traditional business logic, which is you should drive customers back into your wagering pools. Yet, tracks continued to persist with these bets. The jackpots need to go as quickly as possible. Tracks need to revert to a traditional play, get that daily payout, get that churn up. The sport needs churn. It's better for every stakeholder along the way.”

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, Lane's End, XBTV.com and https://www.threechimneys.com/ West Point Thoroughbreds, the team of Bill Finley, Randy Moss and T.D. Thornton, took a look at the win by Two Phil's (Hard Spun) in the GIII Ohio Derby and his subsequent injury and retirement. There was a look back at the Royal Ascot meet, where one of the highlights was the win by the U.S. based 2-year-old filly Crimson Advocate (Nyquist) in the G2 Queen Mary S., and a look ahead at Saturday's GI Stephen Foster S. at Ellis Park. The podcastwrapped up with a discussion on a new proposed rule by the New York Gaming Commission which would require all horses to undergo checks by a veterinarian 72 hours prior to a race or a workout.

Click here to watch the Writers' Room podcast or here for the audio-only version.

The post Pat Cummings Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Letter To The Editor: The Numbers Speak Loudly

After reading the various commentaries over recent days by Ambassador Mack and Bill Finley and the Letters to the TDN Editor on the synthetics debate, I heard Bill say during this week's TDN Writer's Room that we could reduce fatalities by the hundreds with a surface shift. A close analysis shows the numbers are much greater than that.

First a step back. The industry needs a revamp in the way we present this discussion to the public at large and those opponents who would have our “social license” go the way of the circus or greyhound racing. The public sees round, large numbers, not a statistic of “fatal injuries per 1,000 starts” as provided by the Equine Injury Database. That is statistical measure that we use in our own echo chamber, but one that has very little meaning to those outside of the industry. The public (and non- industry press) see 21 deaths at Aqueduct in the winter of 2012, 42 deaths at Santa Anita in 2019 and 12 deaths at Churchill Downs in the past month. Headlines repeatedly scream these numbers back at us.

A look at the Injury Database shows 6,036 fatalities on dirt over the past 14 years, a very loud number for opponents to latch on to. While granted that most starts in the database were on dirt, if we were to apply the fatality rate on synthetics over the same period (1.11/1000), those 6,036 fatalities would fall to 3,599 or 2,437 fewer. Considering the improvements in synthetic surfaces over the past 10 years, the rate per thousand for synthetics over the past decade is .87/1,000. Applying this rate to the dirt fatalities brings the number down to 2,820, a reduction of 3,216.

Not hundreds, but thousands of horses might be saved. While obviously not a popular stance with everyone, these numbers speak loudly in support of Ambassador Mack's position and might enable us to reframe the numbers and, most importantly, the public's perception.

Rodman J. Law is an attorney with the firm Greenberg Traurig, and is co-founder of the firm's Equine Industry Group.

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Churchill Downs Unveils New Safety Initiatives

In the wake of 12 horses suffering fatal injuries since Apr. 27 and after a Thursday meeting with horsemen, Churchill Downs announced new safety initiatives that will go into effect immediately.

They are:

A pause of track-based incentives such as trainer start bonuses and purse pay-out allocations to every race finisher through last place. Purse pay-outs will now be limited to the top five finishers. Churchill Downs officials will engage in ongoing discussions with horsemen to determine ways to reallocate these funds to best serve industry needs. With record-high purses, Churchill has been able to allocate purse money to all starters. For example, the 12th-place finisher in last Saturday's $225,000 Keertana S., Sinfiltre (Uncle Mo) earned $2,070 despite losing by 22 1/4 lengths.
Restricting the number of starts per horse to four starts during a rolling eight-week period.
Ineligibility standards for poor performance. Horses that are beaten by more than 12 lengths in five consecutive starts will be ineligible to race at Churchill Downs until approved by the Equine Medical Director to return.

Of the 12 horses who have died thus far at the meet, the new rules would have been applicable to only one, Kimberley Dream (Colonel John). The 5-year-old mare was beaten by 12 lengths or more in five straight races before breaking down in a race on May 27, the most recent fatality to occur at the track. During that stretch, she was beaten an average of 26 lengths per race.

The Thursday morning meeting also included a presentation by California-based equine surgeon Dr. Ryan Carpenter. He provided educational information and tools to trainers and practicing veterinarians about advanced interventions that can be considered for certain equine injuries.

“The attending veterinarians and trainers at Churchill Downs are incredibly capable and knowledgeable,” said Dr. Will Farmer, Equine Medical Director for Churchill Downs Incorporated, in a statement released by the track. “We feel a duty to provide the latest information on surgical interventions from an expert who experienced the challenges in California a few years ago that we currently face today. Any decision must be made first and foremost with the long-term well-being of the horse in mind. It is imperative that all available, educated and informed options can be efficiently, confidently and thoroughly relayed to the owners.”

Trainer Dale Romans was among those who attended the meeting, which was held at the backstretch recreation center. The Romans-trained Rio Moon (Bal a Bali {Brz}) is among the horses who have died, suffering a fatal injury in a May 14 race.

“It was packed. Standing room only,” he said. “It was the first horsemen's meeting I've ever been to that had that kind of turnout. Everyone is concerned.”

While Romans said he wasn't sure what kind of impact the new rules will have, he said he is confident that track management will do everything in its power to get the situation under control.

“People should just be glad that Churchill is on top of it,” he said. “They will do everything they can to keep every horse healthy and safe. This could help. I'm sure Churchill is studying this to try to find the common denominator. They must have found something where they think these rules will help. I trust in Churchill. This is a safe racetrack. It has always has been one of the safest tracks in the world. At Churchill, horses come first and horse racing comes second. The trainers here may be Churchill loyalists, but that's ok because they've earned our loyalty.”

Romans said a slew of breakdowns in a short period of time is always a possibility.

“In my opinion, this is a statistical anomaly,” he said. “We have a rash of breakdowns right now and then we might go for a very long time without one.”

Trainer Kenny McPeek did not attend the meeting, but touched based afterward with his assistant, who did. Like Romans, he wasn't ready to point any fingers.

“The unfortunate part of our sport is that horses do get injured,” he said. “Their efforts are genuine and they are trying to find some solutions. But I don't think it's ever going to be a zero game. Every time I breeze a horse or run a horse, I want them to come back good. You're always keeping your fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong. But it does sometimes. I don't want to jinx myself but my horses have done great over this track this spring. We've had a large group of horses at Churchill and we haven't had any issues. I think the track has been fantastic all spring.”

One issue not addressed by Churchill was the ratio between claiming prices and purses. Some in the industry believe that horsemen have an incentive to run unsound horses in claiming races when the purses are lucrative. At Churchill, $20,000 claimers run for a purse of $52,000 or 2.6 times the claiming price. The Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) had proposed a rule that the purse of a race could not be more than 1.6 times the claiming price. But that rule was rescinded in 2021 after HISA received negative feedback.

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