Posted on 9/21/2007 6:07:27 PM

Horse Racing: Betting Class Tells, or Does It?

By Brian Mulligan

One of the oldest adages in the sport of horse racing is “class tells”, but class can be fleeting and bettors have to use the right recipe to make sure that class is truly there.

Class and form are intertwined in a racehorse and are surrounded by speed.

Just like any athlete, you can only be on top of your game for so long. With racehorses, horse bettors have to resist the temptation to just assume that they will run the very same race they ran the last time to the post.

Just because a horse is coming off a solid effort in which he won or was close to winning, one cannot assume he will repeat that performance. A win or loss by a narrow margin, which may have resulted from an all-out effort, can knock an ordinary thoroughbred off his sharpness very quickly. This can be devastating in distaffers and sometimes in older stock.

Good horses keep their form longer. That’s why they are good horses and are more reliable from a betting standpoint. They are usually sounder physically than the cheap horses and are just plain better athletes.

Bettors have to make sure that they don’t go for one-stop shopping and just bet a horse that ran good last time. It’s today that matters.

It’s difficult for an inexpensive claimer to maintain his good form for any long period of time. A bettor has to be able to attempt to evaluate how a particular horse is going to respond from a previous strenuous effort. Is the horse coming off an easy win, where he was allowed to get an easy lead and wasn’t pressured at any point of the race? Or is he coming off a demanding race, a race in which he was pushed every step of the way during a serious speed duel and was life and death to hold off his foes at the wire?

‘Class tells’ sounds great. It sounds final. But the truth of the matter is class changes, even in the very best runners. Class is trickier and more vague than form and must be thought of as a means rather than an end and the sooner a bettor understands this concept the better.

Class can also be directly related to speed. The faster a horse runs the better class of horse he can beat. Sharp horses can move up the class ladder beating higher-priced foes or intrinsically classier stock if things break their way.

If a horse is coming off a superior effort in cheaper company, but is catching a horse who has been running great in top-caliber races but is at a disadvantage either distance-wise or pace-wise, the cheaper horse could become a prime betting opportunity.

Bettors should take a glance at one of my personal favorite plays. When a sharp horsemen jumps his runner far up the ladder, either in a claiming event or up the ladder in allowance ranks, he’s telling the world he thinks the horse is doing so good that he can stand the raise.

Often times the public will dismiss the runner because of the steep jump and rely on the tried and true form of a horse that has been running, but failing, at a particular level. The price is often right and a runner climbing the class ladder is fit and almost always live.

This is a prime betting opportunity and should be considered every time it rears its head.

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