By Thomas Chambers
It was one of those weekends when it all came together.
Following the game all year. Knowledge of local weather patterns. Quality horses in quality races. And a decent chunk of luck.
And perhaps most importantly, the time needed to spend studying and handicapping the races. That’s how you win at the track.
I was looking at – and pretty much finished with – Saratoga’s Saturday races as early as Wednesday. Had to cool my heels until Arlington’s Past Performances were ready Thursday evening. For such a big day, Arlington needs to get the PPs out earlier. The Grade I posts were drawn Tuesday!
Also, very curiously, Arlington’s announcer John G. Dooley and handicapper Jessica Pacheco taped their Saturday race-by-race review show on what sounded like Thursday. If they said it once, they said it a million times: “Depending on the weather.”
It was also the most pleasant of digs as our group had air-conditioned comfort in a reserved room of our own at Stretch Run on LaSalle Street. We needed it as the place was jammed and people were stepping all over each other. It’s really the way to go.
The others were late, so I had even more time to get in some last-minute cramming. And it paid off. Before the rest of my group had arrived, I had already hit the third-race exacta at Saratoga. A real confidence builder.
*
We woke up to rain on Friday that continued straight into Saturday morning. And the weather was sort of following the Wisconsin-border train tracks, as the meteorologists sometimes say. Arlington Heights is further from me than Mount Pilot is from Mayberry, so you’ve got to follow the Skillethead.
They first rated the turf “yielding,” so I knew it was very soft. It was upgraded later to “good.” Call it what you want, it was deep and certain horses were immediately up against it and therefore tossable.
It was only race 7, so the Secretariat, the first of Arlington’s Grade I triple-header, came up soon enough.
I liked Laureate Conductor and Take The Points/Kent Desormeaux. ‘Points had been disappointing me all year as I waited for his breakthrough and his less-than-a-length third against a hot Battle of Hastings in a less-than-firm-turf Virginia Derby gave me hope he was on the upswing. Black Bear Island was taking some money, but still at decent odds, and when you don’t know a lot about a horse – he’s a Euro – you sometimes watch and trust the toteboard. So I boxed these three in an exacta.
Reb was the real wiseguy horse, tough to toss and taking money based on his visually impressive win in the American Derby prep for this. But toss I did, along with Oil Man, the DQ’d third-place finisher in that same race. An old-timer once told me that just because a horse does great in Illinois doesn’t make him a great horse. Same for Illinois-breds, which would include Giant Oak. But I put a few dollars on the Oak, for sentiment. You watch, one of these days, maybe his next, he’s going to go off at boxcar odds and crush ’em all. I’ll be ready.
Take The Points got up just in time to nip Black Bear Island at the wire in a thrilling finish with Laureate Conductor coming up nicely to finish third. A modest payout, but nice nonetheless.
Methodology seemingly intact, I tossed Pure Clan in the eighth, the Beverly D. Alnadana, Points of Grace and Tizaqueena made up my exacta box, but I couldn’t get my eyes off of Dynaforce. With Desormeaux up once again, she didn’t look like she had the speed figures to compete, but two races from last summer jumped off the page.
She was nipped by Forever Together (Desormeaux up) in the 2008 Diana and then beat Mauralakana and Communique in the Flower Bowl. In the world of fillies and mares, those are ladies who lunch. And it was her second race off a short break with a jockey upgrade. I made sure to pay attention to my notes: “Best on wet” and “check the turf.”
Tizaqueena, at 20-1, led nearly all the way around with Dynaforce right behind her. Alnadana got right up in the mix to finish second, but Dynaforce carved out a two-length lead and just would not give it up. But I misbet the race and only had her to win and place. It was for $3, so it was another nice payoff, although I should have had the exacta.
The Arlington Million and the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga were run practically on top of each other. I don’t remember which ran first, but the other one stalled its start, thankfully.
After the Beverly D., one of the jockeys, I think it was Arlington technician E.T. Baird, commented on how deep and soft the track was. Bingo! That’s inside information.
But in the Million, I got cute, trying to beat the favorite and the class, Gio Ponti. I figured, despite his recent four-for-five, who’d he beat? The answer turned out to be, simply, everybody he’s faced. I went with Einstein and three Euros in an exacta box. As Gio Ponti slung-shot out of the pack at the top of the stretch I knew I was cooked. But the luck wagon arrived as my cover bet, Just As Well, winner of the Arlington Handicap last month, got up by a nose for place. I made my money back.
I went into the Whitney off of a skunking in the Test Stakes at Saratoga as longshot Pretty Prolific (uninspiring, to this knucklehead, who didn’t see she came out of a key race two back to finish second and was probably pointed to this race) got up for second to ruin my exacta. But I was able to shake it off mentally as I did have the mild longshot winner, Flashing, in my mix.
Asiatic Boy scratched out of the Whitney, which made my job easier. He’s the kind of horse you have to include, even if you don’t like him.
Dry Martini was a must use. Coming off a break, I couldn’t deduce a pattern by Macho Again – would he fire in this race? But Holy Bull on his sire side seemed enough for me. Smooth Air looked in form, albeit with second-itis in three of his last four. Bullsbay? Through process of elimination, I landed on him. I threw a cover bet on Tizway, as I said I would, but Bullsbay seemed to offer more.
After winning two graded stakes, he finished a very respectable fourth in the Stephen Foster, and then threw in a big clunker on the synthetic stuff at Hollywood. The 18-1 price looked mighty nice too.
Old veteran Commentator, who won this race in 2005, handily took the lead in a fairly hot pace. Jeremy Rose on Bullsbay rode a masterful energy- and ground-saving trip and at the far turn, he re-entered the TV screen and swallowed them all. Macho Again followed and bested Commentator. The exacta was mine and I could back up some of the logic. Oh, happy day.
Sometimes, it feels so good, you start chasing the bets, even though you’re ahead. In the 10th at Arlington, I hit a small exacta on a horse who impressed in his one and only race, a win, and with Ivory Empress, an Ian Wilkes horse from Churchill with Julien Leparoux aboard. It was another old adage: pretty big connections, why did they ship in for this? And it’s Million Day.
The day was about wound down and I crafted an exacta in a $25,000, 8.5 furlong turf claiming race and then threw a dart on a 30-1 shot, Rojo Sol. A local horse and rider has to score at some point today, right? Bam! I got the win and place, but I did not get the $135,440 Superfecta. This made up for all those maiden and $7,000 claiming races I’ve died on this year, although those are out of my repertoire now.
I’ll be playing on these winnings for a while.
Couple More Things
* It was about all she could do, but she did it. Zenyatta, in what seemed a lackadaisical and wide trip by Mike Smith, narrowly edged Anabaa’s Creation to win the Grade I Clement Hirsch on Sunday at Del Mar, keeping her perfect at 12-0. If you were watching, you thought she was beat.
* I had given up, but I’ve got to hand it to the lunkheads at the Breeders Cup. They announced this week that saddle cloths in the Breeders Cup races this year will be the traditional multi-colored array – that is, a different color for different numbered horse – instead of the cloyingly purple (as in royal, don’t you know?) cloths they’ve been wearing since day one.
I know they must have looked great in the consultants’ sketches, but when they’re flapping around upon themselves in a tiny TV image, even in Hi-Def, you absolutely cannot tell who is leading, or trailing, the race. It gave the race callers real trouble and I’m sure the jockeys hated it too.
It seems trivial, but there is absolutely no enjoyment to playing or watching a race if you can’t tell what’s going on. (Hey, Arlington, care to trim some of those tree that block a third of the race from the cameras?) For 25 years, it was a big Eff You to the fans who support this game. Players have been telling the Breeders Cup this for years.
Of course, when the decision was announced, the Breeders Cup people took all the credit.
Anyone who can name the cloth and number color combinations for posts 1 through 10 without notes gets a shot and a beer from me at the Beachwood.
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Thomas Chambers is the Beachwood’s man on the rail. He brings you Track Notes every Friday. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on August 14, 2009