Breeders Cup Betting - Emphasis on Works?

A question that always comes up when online racebook fans are ready to handicap the Breeders’ Cup is whether or not works mean anything.

Works have become such a staple of the online betting community when it comes to horse racing that it’s rare to find an online sportsbook fan that doesn’t check out the work tab before making a single online wager. In fact some very astute thoroughbred racing handicappers go out of their way to purchase work reports as well as spending hours in the early a.m. of their home racetrack to watch individual horses stop the clock.

I know some handicappers that won’t even consider a wager on a horse that has what he considered a bad work. From those handicappers’ perspectives, horses that work badly should automatically run badly.

But is this true?

When it comes to the Breeders’ Cup Thoroughbred World Championships, it isn’t true all of the time. Yes, it is true some of the time. For instance, the brilliant grass horse Galileo ran in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2001. All indications were that Galileo really didn’t like the dirt. He worked terribly over it. His connections ran him anyway and he finished up the track, well behind the first three finishers.

But for every Galileo there has been a horse like Sakhee who would have won that same Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2001 if not for the presence of the champion Tiznow. Sakhee looked like he didn’t care for the dirt at all in his works, but all week Godolphin was saying that the horse was special and that he deserved a chance. Not only did he deserve a chance, he probably deserved to win after gaining the lead from Tiznow at the top of the stretch until Tiznow kicked it into gear and came back on the brilliant Sakhee. Tiznow is a hall of fame racehorse, the only two time winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and a champion in every way. It’s not like Sakhee was beaten by a pig out there.

So what does a good or bad work really mean? Good or bad works, like most things in online horse bet handicapping, are determined by the perception of the individual handicapper. Some trainers like to works their horses fast like Bob Baffert. Does that mean that a potential champion horse for Baffert that doesn’t work fast doesn’t have a chance on the track? Absolutely not. Trainers like Steve Asmussen works some of his horses fast and some of his horses, like reigning horse of the year Curlin, slow.

A good or bad work is never determined by time rather it is determined by “action”. What I mean by action is how well is the horse is running over the surface? Does he look comfortable? Does he look like he might dislike the dirt or Pro-Ride or turf or whatever he is working on?

That’s the key in determining how important these works are to your overall handicapping when it comes to the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships. Some prominent national handicappers have claimed that Curlin doesn’t like the Pro-Ride surface because he hasn’t worked fast over it.