How many mint juleps will it take?

It's starting to get a nuts here in Louisville, and that is fitting for Kentucky Derby 137 because this Derby field is driving everyone crazy.  I'm beginning to wonder how many mint juleps it'll take to make the 2011 crop of three-year-olds look good to anyone.

Last night, we had a Derby handicapping session at the University of Louisville Equine Business program, where I am at the eighth pole (graduating in mid-May).  Our panel of guest handicappers included Churchill Downs track announcer Mark Johnson and paddock host Jill Byrne, and the overwhelming consensus was that the Derby ought to consider allowing donkeys into the race this year because they might run faster. 

Personally, I think it's a bit premature to characterize this entire lot of three-year-olds as a bunch of of mules, but the prep races certainly haven't inspired a whole lot of confidence.

And it's still the Kentucky Derby, the world's most famous horse race.  So here's a week-and-a-half-before-the-race breakdown of the Derby contenders, based on the panel discussion, my own opinions after having watched every single Derby prep more than once and on having access to observers closely watching the workouts at Churchill (in no particular order except the first two):

Dialed In:  If there is a Triple Crown winner in this group, he is it.  Mark Johnson said every once and while he has a "tingly" moment where the hair stands up on the back of his neck while he's calling a race, and he had one of those moments during Dialed In's maiden race last fall at Churchill.  Sure, the horse looked as green as a shamrock, but Johnson could see Dialed In's natural brilliance.

Dialed In has since learned how to be a racehorse, and perhaps his most valuable race was his only loss - against older horses, which is a very clever move when most three-year-olds only run against their own age.  Trainer Nick Zito has kept his colt in Florida, and it may be because he knows he's sitting on a volcano of talent.  He doesn't want to screw things up training over the mudbath that is the Churchill Downs racetrack in late April.

Dialed In likes to come from way back, and that is not easy in a field of 20 runners, but he does seem to be a special colt.  I like his chances in this field.



Mucho Macho Man:  Cue the sentimental music - this guy is the "story" of Derby 137.  He was believed dead at birth at the end of the foaling season in June, and he has miraculously recovered to become a solid Derby contender.  His performances so far have been nothing short of all-out, gutsy.  While he looks terrific in workouts, he still appears to have some growing to do, and guess how many June foals have won the Kentucky Derby?

Zero.  Still, I like his toughness.  He lost a shoe in the Louisiana Derby and still finished a tight third.  He's the type who will run over cut glass, and I'm betting he'll be right there at the finish in the Derby.

Uncle Mo:  I went to this shindig a couple weeks ago in Lexington with fellow equine students and other horse industry folks (Bobby Flay showed up for desert, although he didn't prepare it).  We all took turns naming our Derby horse, and I was astonished that only one of about 35 people named Uncle Mo.  If the dinner had been held two weeks earlier, I daresay 80% of the room would have picked Uncle Mo.  How far the mighty have fallen since finishing third in the Wood Memorial.

The quote of the night came from Tim Capps, one of the professors in the Equine Business program.  After someone mentioned that Secretariat also finished third in the Wood, Tim said:  "Yeah, but a lot of horses have finished third in the Wood, and only one of them was named Secretariat." 

Booh-yah.

There's good reason to doubt Uncle Mo, despite the giant expectations that accompanied him on the Derby trail.  His pedigree screams Churchill Downs (Indian Charlie and Arch progeny seem to love it), but the same pedigree shouts:  "I really don't want to run 1 1/4 miles!  Please don't make me!!"  Besides, trainer Todd Pletcher has not put enough foundation under this colt, and he just looks like he needs more time.  He might crush the Travers in August, but I'm not so sure he's ready for the first Saturday in May.

Archarcharch:  That's Arch Arch Arch in case you go cross-eyed trying to read the name.  He's pretty gangly and leggy, and if they gave an award for "worst action" to a Derby contender, this might be him.  Still, he has shown up consistently of late, and you could do worse in picking a Derby longshot.

Comma To The Top:  Seriously, if this horse wins the Kentucky Derby, I will eat a huge plate of beef Beef Stroganoff, which I find to be the most repulsive of foods.  As somebody put it, Comma is a lock to win a 350-yard Quarter Horse sprint at Los Alamitos on a Friday night, but the Derby?  Forget it.

Pants On Fire:  The name suggests he does not have the dignity to be a Kentucky Derby winner.  However, his rider will be Rosie Napravnik, and she has been fantastic.  A victory would make her the first woman to win the Derby, and it's hard not to root for that.  But his running style suggests he will be sucking wind at the top of the stretch and begging to lay down in the infield with all the drunk college kids.

Master of Hounds:  Now that's a name that sounds regal.  In fact, he would be this year's only European horse in the Derby if he runs, and guess who is being talked about as his jockey???  Yes, that would be Calvin "Churchill Downs is my bitch" Borel, who has won three of the last four Derbies.  Master of Hounds was impressive finishing second in the UAE Derby in Dubai, and if he comes over, look out.

Shackleford:  If you like Dialed In, you have to take note of this guy.  He ran his guts out in the Florida Derby and just got beat by the horse that closes from another zip code.  If the pace is "slow" by Derby standards, he might just be around at the end.

Animal Kingdom:  While I know some folks who love this guy, he absolutely hated having the Polytrack kicked in his face during the Vinery Spiral Stakes at Turfway Park.  How much will he be moaning about Churchill dirt being tossed into his snout?  Of course, he won that race at Turfway, and he hasn't run on dirt yet, so those who dismiss him too quickly might be eating crow.

Santiva:  The comment that stood out from the panel discussion on Santiva:  He still looks like a two-year-old.  But I know a few people who are high on him.  He just hasn't proven worthy yet.

Soldat:  This fellow might be a turf horse, but I cannot count him out.  Until his last race, he looked pretty brilliant, and War Front has proven to be a phenomenal sire so far.  I don't know that he'll love 1 1/4 miles, but I have a feeling he might show up with better on Derby day.

Nehro:  This is without a doubt, the "wise guy" horse for Kentucky Derby 137.  He's getting all kinds of love after his impressive performances in the Arkansas and Louisiana Derbies, and perhaps with good reason.  He's a Mineshaft colt, and there's nothing wrong with that.  He should be coming late.  I wouldn't toss him.

Decisive Moment:  If Nehro isn't the wise guy, maybe this one is.  I hear he's looking great over the Churchill Downs surface, and he has a bold jockey from Louisiana.  The question is - will he get cooked in the Derby speed duel?  I'd consider him for underneath in the exotics.

I'll leave it at that for now.  There are others who might get in, and we still have the post position draw, which is a significant factor in choosing a Derby winner.  But we're getting closer, and even though this field might leave something to be desired, you just never know when a horse might step up and make his mark on history.  Personally, I can't wait for May 7!

Black Caviar = Dominance

The four-year-old Australian filly, Black Caviar, is quite simply the best horse in the world at the moment.

Saturday, in the Group 1, $1 million Darley T.J. Smith Stakes, she got her 12th win in 12 lifetime races.  She won by nearly three lengths when, in mid-stretch, she pulled a Zenyatta and looked like she wasn't going to get there.  But she did, resembling a horse bred on Jupiter or perhaps a planet outside of our solar system.

Once again, the Australian fans turned out in extraordinary numbers, proving that Black Caviar is indeed, the Zenyatta of Australia, as I pointed out in a recent post.

Some responded to that post by questioning Black Caviar's ranking as the world's best because she's a sprinter.  At the time, she had also run mostly on straightaways instead of turns.  Those were valid questions.  But her last two races have both been on turns, and both have been romping victories.  Not only that, but Saturday, she ran a clockwise turn and in her previous victory, she won going a counter-clockwise turn.

Her dominance, as measured by the public, is remarkable.  At post time of Saturday's race, in the US pools, $95,264 had been bet into the win pool.  Black Caviar had $87,903 of that!  Here's what that kind of dominance looks like.  Even Zenyatta never claimed this kind of tote board:



The exacta pools were equally comical.  I think you can tell that Black Caviar is number 7 in the screen shot below.  Honestly, I couldn't believe Hay List's exacta price (#1) - he's only the best male sprinter in Australia.  It was a fat payday for this blogger, since Hay List finished a well-crushed second.



The question now is whether Black Caviar could get a longer distance - say a mile?  That's the province of Goldikova as of now, but I would love to see that matchup.  For now, just enjoy and tell your friends about Black Caviar:

Totes McGotes

While the title is an homage to the soon-to-be-classic film, "I Love You, Man," our topic today is not bromances (sorry, Paul Rudd fans) but instead, the pari-mutuel tote system.

Our speaker this week in the Equine Business program at the University of Louisville was David Ruffra, vice president of sales for United Tote, one of the three companies that process the bets made on U.S. horse racing every day.

The tote system gets its share of criticism, and I'll address that in a moment, plus we'll look at some of the fancy new wagering gadgets the company has developed, but first, let's discuss how the tote (totalisator) system actually works.

When you hand your two bucks to the teller at the track or feed it into the self-service machine or click the mouse at Twinspires.com, your money is transmitted electronically into a complex web of switches, routers, hubs and redundancies.  It looks something like this: 

Each track controls how often the system is "refreshed" for bettors.  United Tote has the capacity to update the odds every second of every race, but at the track, that would look like the tote board was exploding or maybe like Joshua's video meltdown in the 1983 movie, War Games.



Instead, the pools are refreshed every 20 to 30 seconds, so you can actually read the odds.  Each odds update is known as a "flash."

The stewards at a given track also have control over when the betting stops.  Each stewards' room has a symbolic, if not literal, "red button," which instantaneously ends the wagering.  This is why at some tracks, you'll notice you can bet right up until the gates open and at other tracks, you get shut out while they're still loading.  It all depends on when the stewards press that button.

You've probably also noticed that the odds change after the race has started.  Example:  They're running down the backstretch, and the 2-1 favorite suddenly becomes 8-5.   This is not because people bet after the gates opened.  That is the final 20-30 second "flash."  Those wagers came in before the stewards pushed the red button.

However, in very rare cases, the pools are accidentally left open too long.  I frequently read criticism by bettors and other parties who seem to think this is a significant, common problem.  But the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau's Wagering Security Office screened more than 88,000 races over a year and a half and found 16 examples of past posting, mostly the result of operator error (someone forgetting to push the button or not pushing it hard enough).  While one instance is too many, that issue is way overblown by some people.

It could certainly be resolved by every racing jurisdiction agreeing to stop wagering as soon as the first horse loads into the gate.  So, at every track, the wagering would stop at precisely the same moment.  But there would be none of this waiting until just before the gates open to bet.  Is that what bettors want?  I'm guessing a lot of bettors like throwing their wagers down just before the gates open.  You can't have it both ways.  If you don't have a uniform pool closure time set well before the gates open, there will always be the rare mistake that leaves the pools open too long.

I also hear people calling for a complete overhaul of the tote, with a goal of combining all of the tote companies, all of the ADW's like Twinspires and many other functions into one gigantic system. It sounds great in theory to streamline things, but any call for eliminating competition and creating ONE of anything kicks my monopoly/anti-trust radar into high gear.

Our speaker, David Ruffra, made some interesting points.  He said the tote companies have the capacity to do virtually anything the industry wants.  Whether it's adding proposition betting, "rolling odds" (wagering while the race is going on), instant rebates - the tote companies can do it right now.  Ruffra said United is operating at a maximum of seven percent of its CPU capacity.  It has 93% left!  But any major changes to the way the tote system works will have to be approved by the states.  The tote companies have no say in that stuff.

But they are creating new technologies, designed to make the racetrack a more pleasant experience for bettors or to increase security and integrity.


At one point, Ruffra said:  "In this business, everyone, given a chance, will steal from you."  That's why United Tote has developed biometric recognition software for the teller machines at racetracks.  Under this system, the teller must press their thumb into the machine to log on.  When they take a break, they give another thumbprint to log off and no one else in the world can log on to that machine.  This safety measure was clearly created because the old system left things wide open for pilfering, and when you're handling thousands (or millions) of dollars in wagers a day, it can be awfully tempting for some people.

Another new technology that hasn't even hit the track yet is the Quick Jack Ez Tote.  This is for cashing out.  Finally, you won't have to stand in a teller line to cash your winning tickets.  Just slide them into the Quick Jack and out comes your money.

The newest self-service betting machines recognize when a person is standing in front of it.  They also now show the win bet payouts, as opposed to just the odds, as you see below.  Those red and green arrows tell bettors how that horse is trending in the last 30 seconds.  In this example, when the next flash comes, Shescominumdone will likely be 3-1, while Toby's Baby will probably be 10-1.



When Keeneland opens Friday, United Tote will be testing a new application called FastBet, which helps people wager on their smart phones.  Because Apple still doesn't allow gambling "apps," FastBet will work more like a website than the applications you find in the apps store.  Ruffra said his company is trying to convince Apple to allow straight-up betting applications, but so far, they haven't budged.

The goal of these technologies is to get with the times and reduce lines at the betting windows. Bet from your seat, instead.  Cash out at an automated kiosk. Swipe a card. Ruffra says one of the Churchill Downs tracks, probably Fair Grounds, will be fully automated in the not-too-distant future.

One difficulty the company has had is getting racetrack patrons to sign up for "loyalty cards," which may be a requirement for using some of this new technology.  Ruffra says, for some reason, racing patrons don't seem to trust the card system, while bettors in other gambling forums have no problem with it.  Paranoia and the racetrack tend to go hand-in-hand, I guess. 

Slowly, but surely, though, racetrack wagering technology seems to be headed in the right direction.

Kentucky Derby Dosage explained, debated

With the Derby picture still somewhat muddled, it's time to bring out those arcane statistical tools to try and figure out who the heck might win Kentucky Derby 137.

One of the tools that always pops up during Derby season is the Dosage Index.  When I first started falling in love with racing a few years ago, I kept seeing this Dosage Index mentioned in articles about the Derby, but I had no clue what they were talking about.  Even as I learned that it was a measure of the proclivity for a horse to get a certain distance, I still didn't understand exactly how it worked.  I just knew it was a number.

But as a student in the University of Louisville Equine Business Program (graduating in May!), one of the many benefits is a much greater understanding of things like the Dosage Index.  So, I shall try to explain the Dosage Index here to those who may not have a complete grasp on how it is measured.  And for others who couldn't care less about such statistical measurements, you can at least see the names of the top Derby contenders and start thinking about whom you might want to bet on.

The original idea of Dosage was developed by French cavalry officer JJ Vuillier, who believed that certain sires exerted extraordinary influence on Thoroughbreds.  Since he was French, he called them "chefs de race."  Later, the Italian Dr. Franco Varola followed up on Vuillier's theories and categorized these sires as Brilliant, Intermediate, Classic, Stout (now Solid) and Professional.  Essentially, Brilliant means sprinter.  Classic means 1 1/4 miles, the distance of the Kentucky Derby.  And Professional suggests a two-mile distance pedigree, something rarely seen in the U.S. these days.  Sprinters almost never last 1 1/4 miles.  Professionals can rarely go fast enough to compete at 1 1/4 miles - you get the idea.

An American adherent to the theory was Dr. Steve Roman, who has continued to update the "chefs de race" lists and Dosage Index to this day.

So here's how to calculate a runner's Dosage Index:  First, access his five-cross pedigree at Equineline.com.  Type in the horse's name and the pedigree will appear.  Look through the horse's pedigree for four generations and mark the chefs de race, which can be found here.  Beside each chef de race name will be a B or an I or a C or S or a P, which signifies the categories listed above (Brilliant, Intermediate, Classic, Solid, Professional).  Some horses have two categories listed.

Early Derby favorite Uncle Mo's pedigree looks like the following.  Uncle Mo is in the far  left blue block.  His dam and sire take up the two blocks to the right, with the sire on top.  Their parents take up the third block.  With Dosage, you are only concerned with the blue blocks (the sires), and while you probably can't read the names, look it up for yourself and you'll see the sires in his bloodlines.  For Dosage, you only go back four generations, so the right-most block here is ignored.

The formula goes like this:  The first generation (Uncle Mo's father) counts for 16 points.  So, if Indian Charlie is a chef de race, he gets a 16.  In this case, Indian Charlie is not, so the score is zero.  The second generation is allotted 8 points each (sire's sire and dam's sire).  Again, in this case, neither is a chef de race.  Same for the third generation, where each sire counts for 4 points.  In his fourth generation, he has four chefs de race (two points each):  Caro, Roberto, Danzig and Northern Dancer.  For each sire, the two points are divided up by their proclivities as mentioned above.  So Uncle Mo's chart looks like this:



Caro's two points are distributed:  One point to Intermediate and one point to Classic.  Roberto is a pure Classic runner, so he gets two points in Classic... and so on.

To calculate the Dosage Index, you add the Brilliant plus the Intermediate plus 1/2 the Classic divided by 1/2 Classic plus Solid Plus Professional.  In other words, B + I + 1/2 C/1/2 C + S + P.  In this case, the result is 1 + 2 + 2.5 divided by 2.5 + 0 + 0 = 2.20.  So, Uncle Mo's Dosage Index is 2.20.

The idea is to get as close to 1.0 as possible because that indicates a perfect balance of speed and stamina.  It is virtually impossible to achieve a perfect 1.0, and that is why winning the Kentucky Derby is so difficult.  The 1 1/4-mile distance of the Derby is essentially the point at which horses cross the barrier of speed to stamina.  It is extremely, extremely difficult for a horse to run for two minutes at a sprinter's speed because sprinting is an anaerobic activity and running a longer distance is an aerobic activity.  The buildup of lactic acid fatigues the muscles and by two minutes, horses get too tired.  This is why you can't "buy" the Derby.  The combination of speed and endurance is almost impossible to predict, and that's why Secretariat only comes along once in a generation, if that often.

The Dosage Index has been criticized as bunk, and as a handicapping tool, it is essentially useless.  But, contrary to its continued usage in the Daily Racing Form and other places, it was not designed to predict the winner of races.  It was designed to calculate the probability of a certain horse to get a certain distance.  That is all.  I repeat, that is all.  And in that respect, it is still a decent measurement.

A second tool is the center of distribution.  I will not bore you with the calculations of that one, but the important rule of thumb for that statistic is that the closer you get to zero, the more in balance speed versus stamina.

Finally, Roman introduced the concept of "dual qualifiers," meaning horses that were within ten points of the top-weight in the Experimental Free Handicap (or EFH) in their two-year-old seasons AND had a Dosage Index of 4.0 or less.  The EFH gives a rating to the top two-year-old runners in an attempt to assess their potential for the Triple Crown the following year.  For many years, Roman touted the fact that no horse with a Dosage Index of higher than 4.0 had won the Kentucky Derby, and this proved true for a while, but in recent years, a few horses have debunked that theory.  Plus, many of the recent Derby winners haven't even been weighted on the EFH, so these tools have seriously come into question.

However, since they were never intended as handicapping devices and since they still give some indication of a horse's proclivity to get a certain distance, they are still useful in the proper context.

So without further adieu, here are the Dosage Index results and Centers of Distribution for this year's top Kentucky Derby contenders, ranked in order of the most recent Paulick Derby Index:

It's very difficult to draw conclusions based on these statistics alone, but if one were to weigh them against the performances so far, Uncle Mo still looks pretty darn impressive.  Dialed In's numbers don't scream DERBY WINNER, but his visual performances have been of high quality so far.  And the numbers on Archarcharch and Santiva are certainly intriguing.  Not to mention Animal Kingdom, who has yet to run on dirt.  Food for thought?