posted May 7, 2008 at 15:21 in Triple Crown Articles

Sharp online horse betting aficionados are always getting a bead on the new faces in the game and although Jamie Ness doesn’t quite pack the same punch as his namesake the crime fighter Elliot Ness, he can still be the good guy at the end of the meeting.

The young Ness has now won back-to-back training titles at Tampa Bay and he set a record in the process.

He ran away and hid from his fellow trainers with 68 happy endings from 199 starters for a cool 34% win slate this past meet.

The thing that makes the Ness story interesting from a horse bettor standpoint is that he did it without a silver spoon in his mouth, but with a pen and pencil.

Chalk one up to the ‘little guy’ as Ness was a press box intern at Canterbury while attending South Dakota State University and was eventually hired there to monitor the track’s simulcast systems after graduation.

After putting together about 4 grand, Ness was just plugging along before cashing with his first big winner Blue Rocket and currently he has about 60 head, almost half of which he trains in Florida.

So, what’s the best way for horse bettors to approach Ness’s runners?

First off, if he dips into the claim box, clever players must give those new acquisitions immediate scrutiny. He is about 42% career with first off the claim runners and that puts him near the very top percentage-wise in the entire country.

When he gets new stock through a private purchase, he’s nearly as potent boasting a 35% stat.

The 32-old Ness is good with young stock, but he doesn’t push his runners. He is especially adept at second time starters to the tune of nearly 45%.

All trainers tinker with blinkers and other equipment and Ness is no different. What is different is that when he allows his horses to relax and be more aware of the surroundings, his runners thrive. He is not known for success with first time-blinkered runners, but with blinkers off, he has popped at about 39%.

Surface switches is a great way for trainers to keep their runners fresh and interested and the most astute horseracing bettors around already know that Ness is about 34% when he cuts back his runners from a route to a sprint.

As one would expect from an up and coming barn, Ness deals with a lot of claimers and allowance runners but if he deems a horse worthy of trying stakes company, look out. He’s only 54% with stakes runners in the last year or so.

Finally, one of the hardest things to do for trainers is to keep horses good once they get good and cagey bettors should know that Ness runners repeat about 32% of the time.

Next stop for this Untouchable is Canterbury Downs and it doesn’t get any easier. There are no easy spots at Canterbury and he has tough competition in the training ranks with Mac Robertson and Keith Bennett, who both are coming off training titles locally and at Turf Paradise respectively.

When scanning the program or the Form for spot plays this summer, astute horse bettors could do much worse than give a double take on the horses trained by Jamie Ness.

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