Kentucky Derby News
Santa Anita Derby

Santa Anita Derby trifecta very hittable - April 16, 2008 “I know how to handicap, I just don’t know how to bet”, said a man to his friend at the track after the Santa Anita Derby. Half of the key to success in horse racing is handicapping analysis; the other half is knowing how to structure a bet.

The Santa Anita Derby trifecta this past weekend consisted of the winner, Colonel John at 5/2, runner up Bob Black Jack at 7-1, and long shot Coast Guard at 19-1. The payoff was $306 on a $1 bet, but the sequence of horses that came in the top three was actually not all that improbable.

Sometimes betting opportunities are just handed to you and this certainly was the case this past weekend. The key to the payoff was Coast Guard who had no business being 19-1. And though Colonel John and El Gato Malo looked stronger for the win, at 19-1 he was certainly worth putting a few bucks down for a win ticket.

The handicapping:

It should be noted that in his prior race, the El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows, he went off as the 5/2 favorite but finished 8th of 9, beaten over 11 lengths. Horseplayers who have been playing the Southern California tracks have probably noticed that good form over regular dirt tracks are not reliable indicators of good performance over the newly installed synthetic surfaces.

Therefore, the converse ought to be true as well. Form for horses that have a particular affinity for synthetic surfaces may not translate well when moving over to conventional dirt surfaces. This may have accounted for Coast Guard’s unexpected poor performance.

If a line can be drawn through that race, then his ability over the synthetic Santa Anita surface must still be assessed. His performance in the RB Lewis relative to horses against which the two favorites El Gato Malo and Col John have also run, shows that he is at least in their ballpark.

In the RB Lewis Coast Guard finished second to Crown of Thorns and beat Indian Sun by 3 ¾ lengths. Indian Sun managed to get within 6 ¼ of El Gato Malo in the San Rafael stakes. That theoretically puts Coast Guard within 2 ½ lengths of favorite El Gato Malo.

In the San Rafael Indian Sun finished ¾ of a length ahead of third place finisher and Hollywood Prevue winner, Massive Drama. Massive Drama finished only a ½ length behind Colonel John in the Cash Call Futurity, (albeit Colonel John had to wait to make his run a bit that day and might’ve finished a couple lengths better had he gotten a cleaner trip). Using both Indian Sun and Massive Drama as focal points, shouldn’t Coast Guard be right there with second betting choice Colonel John as well? Indeed, Coast Guard did finish close to Colonel John, beaten just 1 ½ lengths.

The betting:

First I identified who I thought were the likely winners - Col John and El Gato Malo, The next step was to identify the point of value of the race, which was that Coast Guard seemed likely to outrun his 19-1 odds. Therefore, a trifecta seemed to be the type of wager that was best suited to capitalize on this edge. Colonel John and El Gato Malo were put in the win slot, and then Coast Guard was keyed in the second and third spots (on two different tickets), and then the remaining slots were completed with a combination of Bob Black Jack, Polonius in the place slot, and then those two underneath in the show slot along with Signature Move and Yankee Bravo. I actually didn’t like Yankee Bravo all that much, but since the betting public seemed to be favoring him, I decided to throw him in the 3rd spot. To illustrate the wager, it looked like this:

Bet 1: El Gato Malo, Colonel John / Coast Guard / El Gato Malo, Colonel John, Polonius, Bob Black Jack, Yankee Bravo, Signature Move = $10

Bet 2: El Gato Malo, Colonel John / El Gato Malo, Colonel John, Bob Black Jack, Polonius / Coast Guard = $6

Total Santa Anita Derby wager = $16

The result was handsome $306 payoff off of an investment of just sixteen $1 trifecta combinations. It goes to show that if you structure your bet properly, you can make a nice score even if a favorite wins as long as you can identify a key horse that will outrun his odds.

More news from Santa Anita to come!

Return from Santa Anita Derby News to Home