MFH handicaps the Belmont

Some of you may remember the debacle that was my Kentucky Derby preview. Those of you that do are probably thinking to yourselves, “This jackass thinks I’m going to listen to what he has to say after the trash he gave me for the Derby?” And I couldn’t blame anyone for thinking that. To bring everyone up to speed, I posited that Big Brown stood a good chance of getting beat as the favorite in the Kentucky Derby and suggested four horses that I thought had the best shot of pulling off the upset. I then stood in the OTB as I watched just as many of my picks finish in the top 10 (1) as finish DEAD LAST. In order to save just a little face I will remind SC nation that over the past five years I have made more money betting on horses than I have lost. Just thought I’d throw that out there. Now on to this weekend’s big event:

This Saturday brings the final jewel of the Triple Crown – The Belmont Stakes. By now you know Big Brown will be attempting to be the first horse to win the Triple Crown since Seattle Slew and Affirmed went back to back thirty years ago. However Big Brown is far from the only horse in recent memory to be the Belmont away from history. Beginning in 1997 we went three straight years with horses taking the Kentucky Derby and Preakness only to falter in the Belmont - Silver Charm, Real Quiet and Charismatic. Since then Big Brown is the forth horse to get fans excited about a possible Triple Crown – War Emblem in ’02, Funny Cide in ’03 and Smarty Jones in ’04. The point is we’ve been here before. Experts and novices alike are already handing Big Brown the Triple Crown. I remember the same thing happening with War Emblem and Smarty Jones who were thought to be invincible heading into the Belmont, only to be upset by lesser horses. Funny things happen in thoroughbred racing, and to go through three of the biggest races in the world back to back to back without any mishaps you have to be almost as lucky as you are good. Horses aren’t machines. They are like any other athletes, and they can have off days. They can lose their focus. They can come out flat. A horse can catch a bad trip for any number of reasons that has nothing to do with him or his jockey.

Here’s why I mention this: The morning line odds on Big Brown are 2-5. 2-5! For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means you have to put up five dollars in the hopes of winning two dollars. That’s ridiculous in a ten horse race. More ridiculous is that Big Brown will go off at worse odds than that. My guess is in the 1-7 range. The reason goes back to my last article on the Kimbo Slice fight (which in true MFH fashion actually contained some humor – not my best work, but not dry technical speak like this). Just like Kimbo slice, there is a TON of hype surrounding Big Brown. People have heard all of the reports about how great he is. People have heard about how he has a chance to be the first Triple Crown winner in thirty years. And people know very little about the rest of the horses in the race. When Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978 he took a lot of action simply from people who wanted to say they bet on the Triple Crown winner. There are people who placed bets and never cashed in their ticket, just so they could keep it as a souvenir, and Seattle Slew had just won the freaking thing the year before! What type of action do you think Big Brown will take with no Triple Crown winner in a generation? All of this heavy action drives his odds way down, which drives your potential payoff way down if you bet on him. That’s why the smart money will NOT be betting on Big Brown on Saturday. Don’t get me wrong, many of them, as I, think Big Brown will win the race. He’s clearly the best horse in a very weak field. But you don’t make money betting on 2-5, or worse 1-7 shots. I’ve seen far too many odds on favorites get taken out in my years at Saratoga. And Big Brown has some chinks in his armor. He has a crack in his foot that, despite trainer Richard Dutrow’s comments, can not have him running at 100 percent. He drew the inside post which could prove to be trouble if he doesn’t break well from the gate. He’s raced twice already in five weeks and is about to run further than he’s run in his career – a mile and a half. This has proved to be too much for many great horses (see six mentioned above). All that being said, I give Big Brown a 65% chance to win the Belmont Stakes (that’s a huge percentage in a ten horse race, but still not enough to warrant the odds he’ll be getting).

“So genius,” you say, “who should I bet on?” Well if this were the seventh race on a Friday at Belmont I’d encourage you to stay the hell away from it as that’s what I’d be doing. But since this is the Belmont Stakes, I feel compelled to lay action on it as I suspect some of you do (some may call that a problem, I call it seeking excitement in life). The first horse that intrigues me is the Japanese-bred Casino Drive. The last two Belmont winners were siblings of Casino Drive, showing he has the pedigree to last a mile and a half. He doesn’t hate the track either – Casino Drive looked impressive in winning the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont last month. However, his only other race was a maiden win in Japan and his preparation for the Belmont has been unorthodox to say the least – no timed works, instead, long meandering walks. Conventional wisdom says you can’t win a mile and half race without a work in over a month, and the lack of works has led some to suggest something may be wrong with Casino Drive. To me though, the biggest negative I see is that Casino Drive is drug-free. Many drugs are routinely used in the United States to keep horses in peak racing shape. The best known is probably Lasix, which prevents bleeding in the lungs. Just about every horse in America now runs on Lasix. In Japan, however, performance enhancing drugs, including Lasix, are illegal. Therefore Casino Drive was trained drug free, he broke his maiden drug free, and his connections claim he’ll be running in the Belmont drug free. That means he’ll be running against horses that are on a different playing field. Just ask Jason Giambi how much drugs help an athlete’s performance (no truth to the rumor that Casino Drive will be running in a gold thong as a substitute for performance enhancing drugs as Giambi did). You can’t ignore a horse with Casino Drive’s pedigree in a race like this, but his odds will have to fall from 7-2 for me to lay action on him.

The other horse I’m eyeing is the only one that didn’t completely embarrass me in the Kentucky Derby – Tale of Ekati. The Wood Memorial winner took 4th in the Derby and has the speed to take this race if Big Brown runs into trouble. Eibar Coa has improved substantially as a rider since he single handedly robbed me of a big score at Saratoga a few years ago with a terrible ride, a ride so bad I considered accosting him on his way to the jockey’s room a la a friend of mine the year prior leading him to be banned for the meet (I’m still a little bitter, could ya tell?). Anyway, to me Tale of Ekati has as good a chance as any (in fact better than most) to take this race should the favorite falter, and at 20-1 you have to love those odds. I just hope he doesn’t finish dead last.

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