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Godolphin Repeats as Top-Earning Owner, with Ortiz and Brown Also on Top in 2022

Godolphin, LLC, which campaigned 14 North American graded stakes winners, was the country's leading owner by earnings for the second year in a row, while jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. established single-season earnings and stakes wins records and Chad Brown was the leading trainer by earnings for the first time since 2019, according to figures released Tuesday by Equibase Company LLC.

Godolphin had 88 North American wins from 438 starts for earnings of $16,343,067, down from its single-season earnings record of $17.4 million set in 2021.

The operation was followed on the leading owner's list by: Klaravich Stables, Inc., $9,438,582 (84 wins/336 starts); Peter M. Brant, $7,772,253 (54/183); Winchell Thoroughbreds, $5,661,750 (33/147); and Juddmonte, $5,633,762 (38/144).

Ortiz reached the winner's circle 325 times from 1,363 mounts in 2022, establishing a single-season earnings record of $37,075,772, eclipsing the previous record of $34.1 million he set in 2019.

Ortiz also set a single-season record for stakes wins with 80 trips to the winner's circle, breaking the former mark of 76 victories set in 2007 by the late Garret Gomez. Ortiz was the leading jockey by earnings for three consecutive years (2018, 2019, and 2020) before finishing second in 2021.

Following Ortiz on the leading jockey's list was: Flavien Prat, $29,832,252 (236 wins/1,013 starts); Joel Rosario, $29,250,139 (185/915); Tyler Gaffalione, $27,360,825 (1,491/266); and Luis Saez, $24,339,905 (272/1,540).

Brown sent out the winners of 244 races from 309 starters with 922 starts for earnings of $31,057,362 in 2022. Todd Pletcher was second on the leading trainer's list with 2022 earnings of $30,482,937 (223 wins/342 starters/1,020 starts); followed by Steve Asmussen, $28,579,134 (382/594/2,155); and Brad Cox, $23,851,590 (222/326/916).

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Trakus to Cease Operations

Trakus, the timing and tracking system introduced to the racing industry at Keeneland in 2006, will cease domestic operations Dec. 31, the company's chairman Barry Weisbord confirmed Wednesday.

“Trakus is closing its domestic operations on 12-31, the tracks have all been informed,” Weisbord said. “We have some international contracts and some of those are going to continue for a period of time, but not a significant amount of time.”

Several tracks which had been utilizing Trakus, including the New York Racing Association tracks, are expected to switch to the Equibase's lower-cost global positioning satellite system.

“It's winding down because it loses too much money,” Weisbord said of Trakus's end. “We lost a lot of money over a long period of time. We finally got to a break-even point and Equibase took some business away from us with their GPS system. We tried to get them to take a good look at our GPS system, but that didn't happen and they went with another company. It put us in a situation that it was untenable to operate.”

When it debuted 16 years ago, Trakus provided racing fans with, not only data which had been unavailable previously, but also graphics which allowed horse players to have a better vision of how races were being run.

“Trakus gave people sophisticated information–like actual feet covered–which many tracks put up on their simulcast shows and simulcast presenters talked about it,” Weisbord said. “It was talked about by fans in the big races–you get beat a head and you travelled 28 feet farther than the winner. People have come to understand those four lengths are meaningful. And we introduced that.”

Through its chicklets, which provided a real-time graphic for every horse in the field, Trakus also introduced a new way to watch racing.

“Having worked in broadcast television where we put up four numbers from a guy with binoculars, we always thought if you ever could have a full-field leader board that was right, that would be the be all and end all,” Weisbord said. “What the chicklets were able to deliver was clarity to that picture. The graphics can tell the story of the race and it doesn't matter how tight the director made the field or if he's scrolling through the field. No matter what he is showing, you know who is second or third in your multiple horse bet. They are showing Flightline drawing off, without the chicklets there, you have no idea who is second or third. That clarity to fans and bettors is critical to making racing more fun to watch. We had no idea how important that was going to be 16 years ago–we didn't know back then that people would be able to watch video on their phones.”

Looking to the future for the technology he helped launch in the industry nearly two decades ago, Weisbord said, “Now, my wish for the industry is that the companies that are continuing to operate continue to provide better data and continue to make better graphics. Because that is what the industry needs to compete with other sports and other forms of entertainment.”

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Inaugural Big Data Derby Winner Announced

The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) and the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (NYTHA) announced that a team led by Brendan Kumagai has been selected as the winner of the inaugural Big Data Derby competition, beating out 105 other submissions for first prize. Kumagai, together with Gurashish Bagga, Kimberly Kroetch, Tyrel Stokes, and Liam Welsh, took the $20,000 first prize with the submission, “Bayesian Velocity Models for Horse Race Simulation.”

Kumagai's team created a dynamic model that focused on horses' forward versus lateral speed and examined the results of sustained momentum and velocity within races. The team also studied jockey performance and how that would impact a horse's running style in addition to biometric data, leading to the possibility of calculating a horse's welfare and injury probability.

“We're honored to be named the winners of the inaugural Big Data Derby competition,” Kumagai said. “Our team primarily works in financial analytics and hockey statistics, so working with horse racing data has been a unique challenge which allowed us to apply our skills to a relatively new and unexplored domain.”

The Big Data Derby was launched with the goal of analyzing the vast amounts of data available to racing organizations, and to understand how the results of those studies could impact traditional methods of racing and training. The competition was sponsored NYRA and the NYTHA in partnership with the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, Equibase, The Jockey Club, Breeders' Cup and the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA).

Other models in the competition shed light on injury prevention, jockey decision making metrics, race tactics, track bias and more. Kumagai, a Data Science intern at Zelus Analytics, was previously part of a team that won the 2022 Big Data Bowl offered by the National Football League. The competition was judged by data analyst Rob Bingel, Rhodes College Economics Professor, horseplayer and thoroughbred owner Marshall Gramm, and Craig Milkowski of TimeformUS.

An open notebook of user-created content and data can be viewed at: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/big-data-derby-2022/code.

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Wagering Down, Purses Up in November

Purses for U.S. races continued their positive trend in November, while wagering handle ticked down to essentially put the year's betting numbers on par with 2021's figures heading into 2022's final month, according to economic indicator figures released by Equibase Monday.

A total of $918,196,787 was bet on U.S. races in November, a 4.47% decrease from the $961,166,113 wagered in November 2021. For the year, $11,360,902,118 has been bet, just a .4% drop from the $11,406,643,956 wagered through 11 months in 2021. This year's total still represents an 11.7% increase from the number through November in 2020.

Purses totaled $123,469,492 this November, a 4.91% improvement from the $117,688,125 paid out in November 2021. For the year, purses have totaled $1,226,689,699, a healthy 10.91% jump from the $1,106,062,847 from November 2021. Compared to the COVID-affected year of 2020, purses are up an overwhelming 51.03% in 2022.

For the year, average field size in American racing is 7.26, a slight .93% drop from 7.33 in 2021 and an 8.19% decrease from 7.91 in 2020.

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