Week in Review | Horse Racing Free Tips

Week in Review: More Clairiere vs. Travel Column Rivalries, Please

Turn the clock back a dozen years and recall when a fledgling filly parlayed a November win in the GII Golden Rod S. into a torrid nine-stakes win streak that culminated in Horse of the Year honors.

That filly, of course, was Rachel Alexandra.

Now it's 2021, and the Fair Grounds annually honors Rachel Alexandra's brief (one win, one second) tenure in New Orleans with a Grade II stakes race in mid-February. Saturday's edition just so happened to feature the one-two fillies from the Nov. 28 Golden Rod S. at Churchill Downs, a race that stood out as the most visually impressive two-turn stakes of 2020 in the juvenile fillies division.

Three months ago, 'TDN Rising Star' Travel Column (Frosted) overcame a slow start and multiple logjams in the stretch to bull past fast-finishing Clairiere (Curlin) in the shadow of the wire. The final clocking of that 1 1/16 miles stakes was .54 seconds faster than Triple Crown-aspiring males ran one race later in the GII Kentucky Jockey Club S., signaling both fillies (separated by only a length) might be worth watching down the road.

Not surprisingly, Travel Column was backed to even-money favoritism in the 3-year-old debut for both rivals in the Rachel Alexandra, while Clairiere went off as the 2-1 second choice. Travel Column, a poised speedstress, broke running from her outside stall and asserted herself near the head of the field with a three-wide bid into the clubhouse turn. Clairiere, comfortable rating from a touch farther off the pace than in previous starts, broke inward from the one hole and hit the gate, so jockey Joe Talamo allowed the bay to settle into stride by her lonesome, eighth and last at the fence.

Travel Column led the main body of the pack while sitting second down the backstretch, six lengths behind a 25-1 breakaway pacemaker who would eventually fade to last. The favorite appeared primed to pounce while getting a gift of a trip, but nemesis Clairiere more arrestingly caught the eye as she began building a wave of momentum five furlongs out with a well-measured uncoiling from the back of the pack that belied her two races of experience.

Rail-running Clairiere inhaled half the field by the time the pack tightened up at the half-mile pole, but Talamo had to tap the brakes a touch over the next furlong because she was momentarily hemmed in. When he cued Clairiere to quicken three-eighths out, her response was instant, and the two shot up the reopened rail on the prowl after Travel Column, who by the midway point on the turn had seized first run on the wilting speed and was obviously the filly to beat.

Turning for home, Talamo expertly vacated the rail and split foes to avoid getting trapped behind the caving pacemaker, then switched back to the fence in upper stretch to keep from running up on the heels of Travel Column. Initially, the body language of the two fillies and the actions of their riders appeared to favor Travel Column, because the even-striding gray had yet to be fully set down by Florent Geroux while Talamo was already imploring Clairiere for more after she had already given plenty.

In fact, Talamo's decision to switch to Clairiere to the outside of Travel Column at the eighth pole initially had a “one lateral move too many” look to it. But when Clairiere clearly saw her target and took off in determined pursuit, it amounted to a fourth distinct move over the course of a prolonged five-furlong drive, a remarkable in-race tactical progression that is unusual for a newly turned 3-year-old filly to accomplish so deftly. And it wasn't like Clairiere was reeling in a tired filly, either. Both finished well, but Clairiere finished better. Her winning margin of a neck was augmented by a confident gallop-out that kept her rival at bay well past the wire.

Clairiere's final time for 1 1/16 miles was 1:45.34. She was initially assigned a provisional 83 Beyer Speed Figure (same number as her Golden Rod second), but by Sunday that Beyer got adjusted upward to an 85. Interestingly, the final eighth for the Rachel Alexandra clocked in at 6.28 seconds, slightly faster than the 6.36 final furlong that undefeated older male Maxfield (Street Sense) ran in the same-distance GIII Mineshaft S. two races earlier on the card.

Clairiere is owned and bred by Stonestreet Stables and trained by Steve Asmussen, the same connections who acquired Rachel Alexandra after her 20 1/4-length dismantling of the 2009 GI Kentucky Oaks field. She then, in succession, won the GI Preakness S., GI Mother Goose S., GI Haskell Invitational S. and GI Woodward S.

Clairiere is now on a path that could very well lead to an Oaks berth. She's certainly bred to cover a distance of ground–both her sire, Curlin, and damsire, Bernardini, were Preakness victors (among other multiple Grade I stakes they won up to 10 furlongs), and her dam, Cavorting, was a MGISW up to nine furlongs for Stonestreet.

Clairiere shouldn't be saddled with expectations of turning into another Rachel Alexandra. But right now she and Travel Column are supplying the sport with something sorely lacking across almost every division–a competitive, evenly matched rivalry that is fun to watch play out from race to race. The 1-2-3 finishers from last November's GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies have yet to start as 3-year-olds, but these two have already hooked up twice in that interim, delivering a spectacular show on both occasions. Here's rooting for another rematch in the near future.

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NYRA Looks Out for Its Customer; Good for Them

The Week in Review by Bill Finley

It's not often in this sport that John Q. Horseplayer gets a break, but that's exactly what happened last week when it was revealed that NYRA was no longer accepting bets from the so-called computer-assisted wagering (CAW) players on its Empire Six wager. The Empire Six wager joined the Cross Country Pick 5 and the late Pick 5 as NYRA wagers that are no longer available to the CAW players.

The computer players use algorithms that predict the probability of a particular outcome. If their programs tell them that a horse has a 50-50 chance of winning and is 3-1 they will bet accordingly. They use the same methods for most pools and bet huge amounts of money. Because they receive rebates in the neighborhood of 10%, they don't even have to show a profit on their bets, just as long as their rebates are bigger than their losses.

The number of bettors out there using these methods is minimal, no more than six or seven groups. But they bet so much money that they can severely tilt the pools and drive down prices by significant numbers. The Thoroughbred Idea Foundation estimates that CAW play accounts for as much as 35% of all monies wagered on U.S. racing. That would mean their annual handle is about $3.5 billion.

Not that they are doing anything wrong or breaking any rules. These are very smart and innovative people who are willing to risk huge sums of money and have designed computer programs that put them several steps ahead of the average player. A case can be made that they deserve every last nickel they have made betting on racing, not just in the U.S. but around the globe.

CAW players are, for obvious reasons, coveted by most American tracks. Tracks make money off of their percentage of the betting handle. Taking a micro view of how the business of racing works, why would any track turn away customers that might be betting tens of millions of dollars every year on their product?

If only it were that simple.

This is pari-mutuel wagering, gambling's version of survival of the fittest. The successful bettors are taking advantage of the unsuccessful ones. It's their money that they are winning, not the house's money. With the CAW phenomenon, which appears to be growing all the time, betting on the horses has turned into a matter of the whales vs. minnows. The whales have been gobbling up the minnows and after a while all the minnows will be gone.

It's already happening. The CAW players are pumping billions into the pools across the country, which is a fairly recent phenomenon, yet handle has been stagnant over recent years when it comes to real numbers and has declined sharply when adjusting for inflation. That can only mean that a lot of those who might bet $20 on a race, $200 on a card and play the races once or twice a week have been driven out of the game. Horseplayers only have so much money to spend on the sport and once you tap them out they are going to move on.

The regular players are getting particularly hurt in the jackpot wagers. The pools build up on their losing dollars and are too often scooped up by the CAW players, sometimes on a mandatory payout date.

NYRA took a look at this and, obviously, had some concerns.

“We are trying to level the playing field with these particular multi-race wagers so it's not tilted towards those folks with distinct advantages, meaning complicated algorithmic trading tools and an extremely high volume,” NYRA spokesman Pat McKenna told Steve Byk on his “At the Races” radio show.

McKenna noted that NYRA can operate differently from other tracks because it is a not-for-profit and doesn't always have to adhere to the bottom line. It would be far more difficult for a Churchill Downs track or a Stronach Group track to turn away the CAW money. But even NYRA hasn't gone so far as to ban the CAW players all together. They are still welcome in all other pools and they are the reason why so many horses go into the gate at 4-1 and drop to 8-5 during the running of the race, which is a terrible look for the sport. CAW wagers go directly into the pools and can be played at the very last second.

The status quo is not sustainable. Every day that this persists, another casual horseplayer gives up on the game. Racing cannot do without these everyday players. After a while, you're going to have nothing left but whales vs. whales.

But good luck trying to get a for-profit track to turn away bettors willing to wager millions on their product. Probably the best anyone can hope for would be for NYRA to extend the exclusion into other pools and for other non-profit tracks like Del Mar and Keeneland to also experiment by barring CAW players from some pools.

This is a serious problem for the sport and it's not going away. At least NYRA is trying to make a bad situation better.

Dream Shake Impresses

There were expectations that a star would emerge from Sunday's fifth race at Santa Anita, a maiden special weight going 6 1/2 furlongs. It happened, but just not with the horse everyone was expecting to win.

Sent off at 20-1, 'TDN Rising Star' Dream Shake (Twirling Candy) turned in what might have been the most impressive 3-year-old debut so far this year. Trained by Peter Eurton and ridden by Joel Rosario, he kicked into high gear in the stretch and won going away, by 4 3/4 lengths.

Eurton admitted that he never envisioned such a performance.

“He went way beyond my expectations,” he said. “I had never really challenged him whatsoever. He was an unknown. For him to have closed and ran fourth with a nice finish and a nice gallop-out would have been satisfying, especially against the field of horse we were facing. There were a lot of horses in there that people thought highly of.”

All indications are that the horse will be even better when stretching out.

“He acts like, to me, a two-turn horse,” Eurton said. “He's not ultra quick but neither is he slow. Once he gets going, he covers quite a bit of ground. Going two turns is, hopefully, in the cards for his next race.”

Eurton said he has not picked out the next start for Dream Shake but said a stakes race is a possibility.

The same race included a rare bad showing from the Bob Baffert barn. He entered two highly regarded first time starters in Bezos (Empire Maker), the 3-5 favorite, and Tivoli Twirl (Twirling Candy) only to have them both get beaten by 15-plus lengths. That was bad news for the people who foolishly bet on Bezos in the Derby Future wager before he had even had a start, sending him off at 26-1. The Baffert horses deserve a second shot, but it seems highly unlikely now that either one will make the GI Kentucky Derby.

The Katie Davis Saga

Earlier this week, we wrote about Katie Davis's unhappiness over the New York Gaming Commission's coupled entries rule.

The real point of the story is that she is being penalized by what is quite possibly the silliest, most out-of-touch rule on the books over at the Gaming Commission. There's no valid reason why her mounts must run as an entry with husband Trevor McCarthy's mounts when the two are in the same race. Protecting the betting public is one thing, but it's completely unnecessary in this situation.

This is hurting Davis. It is hurting McCarthy. And it's cutting into NYRA's handle. It's well past the point where the Gaming Commission should have revisited the rule and taken it off the books.

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To Decide 2020’s Winningest Horse, Let’s Strike a Three-Way Match

The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton

Saturday’s Claiming Crown races produced a three-way tie atop the North American leaderboard for winningest horse in terms of victories in 2020.

Galerio (Jump Start), Frost Or Frippery (Lewis Michael) and Combination (Alternation) all enter the final three weeks of the year tied with eight wins apiece.

How about scheduling a three-way invitational among these relatively matched geldings to settle the score prior to Dec. 31?

The category of most victories in a season is annually overshadowed by the purse-earnings rankings, which are dominated by high-end horses competing in elite graded stakes.

But the accomplishment of racking up the most wins on the year can be more difficult, because it usually involves keeping a less athletically gifted claiming- or starter-level horse in winning form over a 12-month span.

It’s also more intriguing to follow from an “everyman” perspective, because Thoroughbred racing’s annual victory leaders are generally overachieving underdogs who are easy to root for.

Combination was first up on Saturday. The Saffie Joseph, Jr. trainee for owner Frank Calabrese already had eight wins on the year and was seeking his ninth in the $75,000 Claiming Crown Express S. at Gulfstream Park. The 4-year-old, who has been claimed six times this year for tags between $8,000 and $25,000 while primarily sprinting in south Florida, tracked the favorite but couldn’t power past, checking in third.

Frost or Frippery ran in Saturday’s final Gulfstream race, the $75,000 Claiming Crown Iron Horse S. The 7-year-old was claimed once this year, for $20,000 by current trainer Brad Cox on behalf of owner Steve Landers Racing, LLC, back in April, and spent most of this season roughing up optional claiming and starter allowance foes at Oaklawn Park, Churchill Downs and Indiana Grand. He unleashed a furious late bid to spurt clear in deep stretch but was almost nailed at the wire by another onrushing challenger. A tight photo revealed he got a nostril down first, earning win number eight on the year (21st lifetime).

Galerio was not in action on Saturday. He won his eighth race of the year back on Nov. 21 at Laurel Park. The 4-year-old was claimed that day for $35,000 and is awaiting his next start for new owner SAB Stable, Inc., and trainer Dale Bennett.

This trio ranks as tops in the continent. There are nine horses with seven wins right behind them. But none are entered to race in the next few days, so let’s assume that only the three currently tied at eight are likely to be in the running for nine wins in 2020.

Might Gulfstream be induced to try and bring them together in a season-ending invitational for winningest horse bragging rights?

They aren’t very far apart numbers-wise: All three routinely run low-80s Beyer Speed Figures.

Logistically, Combination is already stabled in south Florida, and Cox, the trainer of Frost Or Frippery, is maintaining a division there for the first time this winter.

The connections of Galerio would have to be incentivized to leave Maryland. But he does appear to have a slight class edge based on success against allowance-caliber competition and his $35,000 recent claiming valuation (versus $25,000 for Combination and $20,000 for Frost Or Frippery).

Frost Or Frippery’s sweet spot is 1 1/16 miles. Galerio’s is a mile. Combination, however, is strictly a sprint specialist at five and six furlongs. Gulfstream’s extended backstretch chute would allow for flexibility in carding some middle-ground distance that might bring these three closer together. Perhaps seven furlongs or a one-turn mile? Maybe Combination could get a weight break for being out of his element, distance-wise?

This concept might seem a bit outlandish, but it’s not without precedent. In 1997, when I was a member of the Suffolk Downs press box crew, a local gelding named Maybe Jack had 12 wins by December. So did a Finger Lakes-based gelding named Pro On Ice. We proposed an end-of-season match race to bring the two together, and both trainers agreed to participate in the “Showdown at Suffolk” to see who would emerge atop the North American leaderboard with 13 wins.

Concessions had to be made both ways. Maybe Jack had the home-track advantage and preferred two turns but was a closer. Pro On Ice had to ship but was speed-centric, which gave him a theoretical edge in a two-horse race. The purse was $15,000, with $10,000 to the winner (with the track also paying shipping costs for Pro On Ice and hospitality accommodations for his connections). Maybe Jack was weighted at 124 while Pro On Ice carried 119.

“This is good for racing,” Mike Ferraro, the trainer of Pro On Ice, said at the time. “This is not about winning or losing. It shines the national spotlight somewhere else besides the multi-million dollar outfits.”

The late Al Borosh, who trained Maybe Jack, agreed: “This match race grabs people’s attention. You can hear that just walking around the backstretch or in the grandstand.”

Maybe Jack pressured Pro On Ice straight from the start and the two raced in lockstep to the eighth pole before Maybe Jack opened up in deep stretch to win by 9 1/2 lengths. The showdown wasn’t a blockbuster success from a handle-generating standpoint, but it made a huge splash publicity-wise during an otherwise slow time of the year for the sport.

Match racing has drifted out of vogue in the 23 years since that race took place. But being the owner of the winningest horse on the continent remains a huge point of pride for smaller outfits.

“It just doesn’t get any better than this,” said Maybe Jack’s then-owner, John Buckley Jr., who at the time was campaigning a three-horse stable. “With the buildup with this race and all the hype, it was my finest moment in the business.”

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The Week in Review: Before Feasting Upon Thanksgiving Fare, Chew On This

Last week’s headlines had little to do with on-track action. This coming week though, we awaken from the sport’s annual post-Breeders’ Cup snooze with an eye toward decent Thanksgiving weekend racing and on-the-horizon stakes that could add a touch of intrigue to the tail end of the 2020 season.

But before you feast upon the holiday fare, chew on these side dishes that anchored the last seven days of the news cycle (plus a few other tidbits that didn’t land on the front pages):

Last Tuesday we learned via federal prosecutors that more doping charges could be in the pipeline for existing and new defendants in the alleged years-long drugging conspiracy involving now-barred trainers Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro, and a wide-ranging cast of enablers that includes veterinarians.

A key takeaway from that Nov. 17 court hearing is that the lead prosecutor said he now believes that two of the alleged performance-enhancing drug (PED) suppliers were pushing at least some sham pharmaceuticals to Servis that didn’t really do anything to make a horse faster or stronger.

But, the prosecutor added, the government will still be treating those substances as if they were actual PEDs, because the true intent on the part of Servis was to allegedly pump horses full of illicit drugs.

The other main point gleaned from last Tuesday’s hearing is that this case isn’t likely to go to trial until the second half of 2021 because of the voluminous amount of evidence that is surfacing in the discovery process.

So it’s conceivable we could still be batting around this court case over next year’s Thanksgiving turkey.

Meanwhile, on the western front…

The day after the federal doping case hearings, TDN asked California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) equine medical director Rick Arthur, DVM, to identify what under-the-radar substance might be likely to next surface as drug of abuse.

Arthur replied in the Nov. 18 Q&A that “It’s not really under the radar. We are concerned with SARMs [selective androgen receptor modulators]. Those are a class of drugs that have anabolic-like activity, but they are not really anabolic steroids. We’ve seen some of them in testing already [and] that is a group of drugs that I think that we have to pay attention to.”

The following day, during the CHRB’s monthly meeting, Arthur brought up a separate topic about an abused substance that hasn’t been in the headlines lately: Thyroxine.

In introducing a new rule proposal Nov. 19 to curb thyroxine “to the point that it really will not be used any longer within CHRB facilities,” Arthur revealed that since the start of this year, veterinarians on the Southern California circuit alone have reported 287 prescriptions for thyroxine. Incredibly, he added that “over half of the prescriptions” were written for just two trainers, and 80% of that thyroxine was “prescribed by just three veterinarians.”

This despite a CHRB advisory against thyroxine that has been in effect for more than six years warning against its use in horses that don’t legitimately need it because of the drug’s nasty reputation for producing cardiac arrhythmias and atrial fibrillation. Arthur added that “while we cannot assert a cause-and-effect relationship, one sudden death already in 2020 occurred five days after the horse was prescribed thyroxine.”

The CHRB did not disclose the names of the trainers, veterinarians, or the horse that perished after receiving thyroxine. The motion to advance the rule passed, 7-0.

Fixed-odds experiment coming to NJ…maybe

Dennis Drazin, the chairman and chief executive of Darby Development LLC, which operates Monmouth Park and its sports book, predicted to the New Jersey Racing Commission (NJRC) last Wednesday that within five years, fixed-odds betting has the potential to comprise “a significant portion of the handle” in horse racing.

Several commissioners expressed fears about fixed-odds betting cannibalizing the existing pari-mutuel system. Yet despite their repeated lamenting about “last rites” to a model that “will lose out in the end if it has to compete” with fixed odds, no one on the NJRC inquired about what a realistic pricing structure might look like for the new model so it could benefit bet-makers, bet-takers and the horsemen.

Fixed-odds bookmaking, which allows a customer to lock in pricing at the time of the wager, does indeed have theoretical promise to revolutionize, reenergize, and even replace traditional straight wagering in this country (while leaving exotics to be better handled by pari-mutuels).

But when the NJRC voted 4-0 Nov. 18 to approve a fixed-odds pilot program for 2021 that would be limited to bets on out-of-state Grade I races, it didn’t even raise the issue of how the bets would be priced in terms of takeout so that the tracks that fund those races get paid for their product.

Granted, the pilot program wasn’t even the NJRC’s idea. It was handed down by the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which has the authority to regulate fixed-odds wagers. The NJRC was only involved because a provision in the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978 requires approval from the receiving state’s racing commission before wagers can be taken on imported signals.

What’s in a name?

It’s great that a smaller track laden with no-frills charm like Fairmount Park will have its lifespan extended thanks to 2019 legislation in Illinois that granted it the privilege to host slot machines, table games and sports betting.

Not so enthusing was last week’s announcement that Fairmount’s corporate gaming partner is “rebranding” (read: obliterating) the name of the storied oval 12 miles east of St. Louis so it will now be known as “FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing.”

Apparently, 95 years of history are getting tossed into the nearby Mississippi River. Sure, the corporate backer is putting up millions of dollars. But FanDuel wouldn’t be there in the first place if it wasn’t for Fairmount hanging in there long beyond most expectations for it to survive.

In the Nov. 16 press release that heralded the erasure of the Fairmount name, the partners also announced that the company will “fund the renewal and running of the $250,000 St. Louis Derby, the track’s signature event, which has not been conducted since 2006 due to financial constraints.”

Actually, the 2006 St. Louis Derby was the only edition of the race ever conducted. It was the legacy of the old Fairmount Derby, which was run inconsistently between 1926 and 1996, with decades-long gaps between some runnings.

But that one and only St. Louis Derby did produce a good trivia question. Can you name the winner of that 2006 stakes? He was a colt who won six straight races leading up to the GI Kentucky Derby. He ran 12th behind Barbaro, and it was discovered post-race that he had been hindered by an ankle chip. After surgery to repair it, this chestnut was pounded to 4-5 favoritism when returning to his winning ways at Fairmount on a muggy Saturday night in August.

Need another hint? A year later, that colt flourished as a Grade I force, sweeping both the Whitney H. and Woodward S. at Saratoga.

Lawyer Ron is the answer. I’ll be rooting for Fairmount to lure another high-profile horse to the St. Louis Derby in 2021.

I just won’t be referring to that appealing old track by its unimaginative new name.

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