Most favourites and well bet horses that win are simply much the best. There are not many angles or special factors behind their predictable victories. They’re just faster than their rivals when racing under optimal circumstances.
Long shot victors are different, however. It requires more creative delving into the past performances to anticipate these types of winners that occur so infrequently due to the weird convergence of subtle factors which bring about bomb results.
Mark Cramer, a studious, contrarian handicapping writer now based in France after forging his reputation as an innovative researcher in America, clarifies, “More favourites win for fewer reasons, and fewer long-shots win for more reasons.”
Plenty of imagination is needed to distinguish between outsiders that don’t have a prayer and those with at least some redeeming qualities. A recent esoteric example is Warfarer, who caused a 45/1 shocker in a Scottsville MR 82 handicap, after running stone last at his two previous starts!
In June, the four year old gelding over-raced and faded out badly. Prior to that, he suffered the same fate when also not striding out back in March. Unforgiving punters quickly kicked him into touch when he was wheeled back to action. But, was he really such a forlorn hope in a mediocre contest? Three runs back in the umThombothi Stakes he finished a one and a half length second at level weights to Head Honcho, a subsequent Grade 3 winner.
Hindsight is perfect science, of course. Nobody is expecting a sensible punter to actually back a horse like Warfarer to win after coming off two such dismal fails. Recognise though that the ‘recency bias” causes us to over-emphasize what has happened most recently. Clever exotic players will dig deeper into the past performances, then try not to let these unlikely, but not quite impossible, outsiders blow them out. Adding them, even in some small defensive capacity on their tickets, may just lead to a happy ending.
Tight finishes are part of the game, especially in turf racing. Whilst a suicidal early gallop can lead to a pace meltdown, where every horse is decelerating at the end, the typical profile of a race on the lawn sees horses conserving their energy to begin with, before running the last part of the race as fast as possible. Clustered, bunched up finishes are the norm meaning that punters are routinely subjected to fine margin wins or tough beats. Cultivating a philosophical way of handling this and staying on an even keel is part of the mental side of punting.
Last week, Interbet bettors went all in on Juniper Spring (7/20), Captain of Tortuga (13/10) and Celebration Rock (15/10) only to see them narrowly beat. On the other side of the ledger, Pearl Tiara (11/10) scrambled home by a wart over Palace Rose to land the gamble for Glen Kotzen and Brandon Lerena. A remorseful punter’s fantasy is to imagine over the course of the year “buying back” a neck’s worth of defeats to “reverse” their hard luck stories.
Is it correct to describe it as ultimately “luck” that determines these fine-line outcomes? Do you believe luck evens out over the long term? Would you rather be “good” than “lucky or possess some optimal combination of the two? It’s interesting to mull over these questions, but all rational horseplayers’ acknowledge that no matter how much preparation and skill goes into handicapping and formulating intelligent bets, they can, at best, focus only on making smart decisions – they have no ultimate control over how the race pans out nor the outcome.
It’s best to be gracious in victory and resilient in adversity. Or, put more caustically by French poet, Jean Cocteau, “We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?”