Posted on
1/25/2008 2:06:46 PM
Off Track Horse Betting – Trainer Speak
By Brian Mulligan
It was once said about a prominent Hall of Fame trainer, whose initials are DWL that he never lies unless his mouth is moving.
With that said, sharp horse bettors do have to handicap the speakers just as well as the horses, just about every day and especially as the Road to the Triple Crown begins in earnest here in the next several weeks.
When cagey horse bettors here quotes like ‘we’re not sure where we will run, we’ll see how he comes out of his last race’.
Or the ever reliable ‘he didn’t handle the track’; they can bet their bottom dollar that something is rotten in Denmark.
Consider these recent quotes by Bob Baffert, who trains sprinter of the year Midnight Lute, in Ed Golden’s Santa Anita notes recently.
Baffert was commenting on a 1:10 3/5 work by his charge. Baffert: “He did it easy and was in hand. The time was quick, but the track isn’t super-fast. Good horses work fast, and Midnight Lute is a good horse.”
All well and good, but this quote does not really hold water. First off, all clever Southern California bettors know that BAFFERT ALWAYS works his horses fast. It’s his style since he came over from the quarter horse set and he’ll likely continue to let his horses roll.
And check out Lute’s other recent works. They were sizzling. Of the 6 works published since mid-November, 4 have been best of the morning drills including a best of 34 work to kick off 2008.
Baffert’s assertion that the track isn’t super-fast does not jibe with what happened the prior weekend, where sharp horse bettors have to take results with a grain of salt.
Consider the result of last weekend’s San Rafael.
In the Grade III San Rafael Stakes at one mile, El Gato Malo capitalized on a ridiculously fast pace (:22.25, :44.34, 1:07.90) to win in come-from-behind fashion on a lightning-fast Cushion Track surface. El Gato Malo turned a 9 1/2-length deficit at the half-mile pole into a 6 1/2-length triumph while earning a 98 Beyer, clearly his top figure of his career.
Face it, the track was a highway.
This just goes to the theory that you can’t take anything at face value these days. To accentuate that fact, just try to listen to 10 minutes or so of the people running for president. Those people will say anything to anybody if it is in their immediate interest.
Clever bettors have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Trainer speak also comes across in cheap races too and it was never more evident recently when a horse made his racing debut in Chicago at age 10.
Yup, 10. I’ve got socks and bread older than that. He’s the Julio Franco of horse racing. But just to show that trainers with minor stock will say whatever they need to is super evident when talking about this firster.
His name is Sovereign Sigh. He is a homebred from an Oklahoma fellow and was sent to Manny Perez at Hawthorne.
Perez in a story on Equidaily: “He was a little fatter when I got him, but I put him on a strict diet. He has lost a lot of weight, now he looks like a racehorse.”
And here’s the Perez kicker: Perez: “This horse can run, but I wish I had one more work in him.”
At 10, he needs one more work? That is absolutely ridiculous.
How did it all pan out? Well, amazingly, he wasn’t even the longest shot in the field at 44-1 as one horse went off at 64 and another at 83-1.
But when the smoke cleared, Sign saw all the heels after he hit the gate early and ran dead last.
The bottom line for clever horse bettors is the read in between the lines and not take everything at face value in this crazy world we live in.
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