For five weeks every spring, thoroughbred horse racing has a reserved place -- sometimes in the foreground, sometimes on the back pages -- in the nation’s consciousness. Starting with the Kentucky Derby, run every year on the first Saturday in May, and concluding five weeks later with the Belmont, the American populace is at least peripherally aware of horse racing’s rite of spring participation alongside March Madness, the Masters, the NBA playoffs, and the Indy 500.
If a horse wins the Derby and the Preakness and has a chance of joining the eleven 3-year olds who have won the Triple Crown in the last 140 years, the attention is magnified ten-fold going into the Belmont. If different horses win the Derby and the Preakness, attention will wane immediately after the Preakness and drop off a precipitous cliff the moment the Belmont concludes – garnering zero thought from the vast majority of Americans for the next 47 weeks, only to resurface again the following year when mention of Derby parties, mint juleps, and unproven thoroughbreds resurface.
This site will be dedicated to the other 47 weeks.
As someone who grew up in the shadows of the Twin Spires at Churchill Downs, horse racing has always been in my blood. And it has always been a year-around condition.
My dad and I went to Churchill at least once a week during the racing season throughout my childhood. I used to envision myself winning the Kentucky Derby as a jockey with a last-to-first move accompanied by an unrelenting roar from the Churchill Downs' crowd. That daydream shared the spotlight with the equally likely probability that I would win the Masters with regularity and enter the halls of golf immortality. Those were the backyard visions of my youth.
When Churchill Downs shut down for the season there was always a trip to Turfway or Ellis Park with my dad -- Ellis being especially memorable for its video arcade circa 1983 -- to ensure that horse racing was always top of mind. As the years went by I paid less and less attention to the arcades and peripheral attractions and more time studying the racing form.
My dad would allow me to spend a few dollars on shared wagers with him at an early age, and 20+ years later I still remember a cold night at Turfway Park in which I hit 5 of the 6 races in the Pick Six. It's safe to say that cold night, and the correlated wagering success, made a lasting impression.
The legal age to bet is 18, but by the time I turned 16 I had scouted out the tellers at Churchill Downs who wouldn't question my age. It probably helped that I walked up to the betting window and starting spitting out $1 exacta wheels as if I had been playing them for years. In actuality, I had.
For anyone who likes to gamble on sports but isn't accustomed to betting on horse racing, I can promise you it will be the most analytical undertaking of your gambling career. It's like playing in a Fantasy football league that has an auction every week, and you must decide how much to pay for a given player based on the competition, conditions, and cost of that player for that particular week.
At the age of 36, studying the racing form for a great day of racing is the most enjoyably, analytical undertaking of my calendar year. Sifting through each horse's past performances, looking for racing trends or subtle indicators, analyzing the relative value of paying an extra $8 to add another horse to my Pick 3: it's a constantly evolving equation in which you're given in initial set of parameters (odds, track conditions, etc.) and then the parameters change right up until the race is run.
Every so often your analytics allow you to revisit the kid-in-the-candy-store sensation as you walk over to the betting window and collect on a longshot that most everyone else overlooked. That glorious feeling never gets old.
Unfortunately, when a friend asks "where can i go to learn how to bet on horse racing," I don't have a good answer. There are plenty of websites dedicated to established horse players, but very few which offer introductory advice about the intricacies of betting. Meanwhile anyone who has ever been to Churchill Downs for the Derby or to a big day of racing knows that betting lines can rival the misery of the queue at the DMV. Once-a-year attendees largely don't know how to bet and the line can take forever. And for newcomers wagering can be an intimidating affair when you don't know how to say you're desired bet, which inevitably results in frustration for those behind you in line.
At the same time the horse racing industry desperately needs new fans, so we must be do better at converting once-a-year visitors to ongoing fandom. With that important goal in mind, I'm hoping to dedicate a fair amount time to the wagering window, form the most basic wagers to studying the racing form to a few of my preferred wagering strategies, which I'm calling my "betting angles to live by."
Said betting angles will surely lead to frustrations, near misses, and second guessing as these pages evolve. Wagering "what ifs" are as innate to horse racing as the track itself.
Beyond that I hope these pages lead to random places and vantage points, whether that implies contemplating the sport from my condo, from the road, or from the parking lot outside the track. I'm aiming for otherness as opposed to redundancy or calculation. We'll see how I fare in that regard. Thankfully, I won $1400 this spring wagering on Belmont and Derby Day, which I view as license to spend extra gas money for trips to the racetrack and random discovery.
As for audience, this forum is intended for anyone wanting to ask questions about racing & wagering. Anyone interested in horse racing. And most importantly, anyone who loves and appreciates the magnificent thoroughbreds who make the sport possible. If we don't place their health and well being above all else, we've failed before we begin.
For anyone who happens to enjoy these pages, I'm hoping we can meet at the racetrack too. Blogging is great. So is online wagering. It's a convenience I make use of virtually every week. But our sport's product -- and its future -- is at the racetrack. No substitute will ever do.
We've got 47 weeks to figure the rest out. Plenty of time to make mistakes. And learn from those mistakes. Plenty of time to visit our sport in action, whether at The Spa (Saratoga) or The Great Race Place (Santa Anita) or the less heralded tracks that dot our nation's countryside.
For anyone who tags along for the ride, this blog is dedicated to you. Welcome to our 47 weeks.
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