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Crist's Breeders' Cup Diary: Sunday, Oct., 31
By STEVEN CRIST
Sunday, Oct. 31 - In the first flickering moment of consciousness this morning, I thought it was Saturday and eight wonderful opportunities to make a Breeders' Cup fortune still awaited. Then reality returned with the memories of Singletary, Wilko, Better Talk Now, and the annual futility of trying to being right six, or four, or even three times in a row on Breeders' Cup Day.
My primary personal-investment lesson for the day, which I shall try hard to remember a year from now, is not to put 80 percent of my eggs in the pick-4 and pick-6 baskets as I did yesterday. There is plenty of money to be made on Breeders' Cup Day by being right in just one spot. For me that spot was the overlaid $364 trifecta in the F&M Turf, and a more balanced allocation of investments could have gotten me out for the day instead of pulling me only halfway out of the fiery pit of defeat.
Congratulations to those who were wise, drunk or desperate enough to come up with some of yesterday's surprising winners. I still couldn't bet Wilko with counterfeit money; Singletary was not impossible in an impossible race but was no bargain at 17-1 and plenty of others looked more enticing at bigger prices; and Better Talk Now, while arguably an overlay at 27-1, was a highly unlikely winner off his previous form.
Some other thoughts:
Distaff: The collective opinion of the public was dead right. Ashado looked overbet to me at 2-1 but she was the right horse and she'll be a deserving champion 3-year-old filly. She's not dazzling but she always fires a solid shot, has a splendid career record and wins when it counts. Storm Flag Flying was a gallant second in her final career start. Island Fashion may not have won in any case but had no chance with a wide and impatient ride.
Fun fact: The early fractions in the Distaff - 22.93, 46.70, 1:10.50 - were significantly faster than those in the Classic (23.42, 47.00, 1:11.32.)
Juvenile Fillies: Sweet Catomine was excellent in victory, the day's lengthiest winner despite momentary trouble. She is a special 2-year-old filly as well as the obvious divisional champion. The Frizette form held up better than I expected with Balletto and Sis City running second and fourth. Sense of Style had some excuses but not enough and has simply failed to develop off her summer form.
Fun Fact: The first three finishers were the winners of the three major preps (Oak Leaf, Frizette, Alcibiades) and beat everyone who they beat last time again ((Sweet Catomine vs. Culture Clash, Balletto vs. Sis City and Play With Fire, and Runway Model vs. Dance Away Capote, Sharp Lisa and Sense of Style.)
The Mile: The result suggests there is one appropriate handicapping method for this race: Darts. Singletary's a nice horse and may have been best in the Oak Tree Mile last time out but there was something to like just as much about more than half this field. Antonius Pius was probably best, losing far more than half a length between his own bad behavior and Jamie Spencer's ongoing clueless riding in American races.
I just wish this race was run as the first of the day and taken out of the pick six, the way they do with the steeplechases at Saratoga. It wasn't making a difference on any of my 3-for-6 tickets yesterday, but in many years it forces players either to stab recklessly or devote too much of their ticket to getting through this chronically wide-open event.
Fun fact: A $1 14-horse all-all-all trifecta would have cost $2,184 and returned $6,217.60. A $1 14-horse all-all-all-all superfecta box would have cost $24,024 and returned $53,694.
The Sprint: Good for Speightstown. He has been an admirable and fast horse all year, and reports and suspicions he was tailing off proved unfounded. I don't see how you can give him the Eclipse over Pico Central, but his victory on top of Ashado's makes Todd Pletcher the deserving winner of the trainer's Eclipse.
Only five lengths separated the first nine finishers under the wire. Kela ran well closing for second and the unlikely Bwana Charlie may have run even better getting up for fourth.
Fun Fact: A four-horse box of the horses with the highest career-best Beyers - Cajun Beat (120), Speightstown (117), Kela (116) and My Cousin Matt (114) - would have nailed the $2,684.20 tri.
The F&M Turf: Ouija Board was simply better than these and the value in the race came from playing against the two overbet Frankel fillies, Light Jig and Megahertz. I'm glad Film Maker held second for payoff purposes but Wonder Again was more impressive rallying from far back into a very fast final fraction to be third.
Fun fact: Could Ouija Board have won the Turf, the race she was originally going to try? She'll get a lower final-time speed figure than Better Talk Now (2:18.25 for 11f vs. 2:29.70 for 12f) but flew home with a last eighth in 11.89 while the boys were playing pinball through a final quarter in 25.55.
The Juvenile: The most confounding result of the day and not just because Wilko won. By all objective standards this had looked like a good group, but the race went slower than the Juvenile Fillies and no one looked like a particularly promising Derby horse. All five of the favorites went backwards off their previous form.
Afleet Alex, shuffled around early and put to an impatient full drive on the turn, may have been best but the prospect of his going much longer does not make the heart race. On his overall record - 4 for 6 including the Sanford and Hopeful, and seconds in the Champagne and Juvenile - he merits the divisional title over 3-for-11 Wilko.
Roman Ruler was overrated coming into the race but probably is better than this.
Fun fact: Thirteen horses in other Cup races went off at longer prices than Twice Unbridled, the twice-trounced maiden who figured to be 100-1 but went off at only 33-1.
Fun fact 2: Bob Costas told a national television audience that no 2-year-old champion has ever won the Kentucky Derby.
The Turf: I had no financial interest in the race but I think the stewards did the fairest thing by leaving the result alone because it's likelier than not that the order of finish was unaffected. That is inconsistent with what happened in the Arlington Million, when Powerscourt was clearly best but disqualified anyway, but a bad decision there should not be a precedent for a second mistake.
Better Talk Now should have been the fourth or fifth choice in the betting, not the eighth, but something had to go wrong for all three favorites for him to win. Something did. Magistretti peaked two starts ago and is simply headed the wrong way. Kitten's Joy, who had improved 12 times in a row, finally took a step backwards.
As for Powerscourt, Jamie Spencer looked like an Aqueduct winter apprentice on a bad day, putting his colt into a bizarrely premature drive. Did Spencer actually think that the strangely overbet pacesetter Star of the Bay was the horse to beat, or did he think the finish line was somewhere around the three-eighths pole?
Classic: Ghostzapper was clearly best, thoroughly deserves to be Horse of the Year and is an unusually fast racehorse, but the way the race unfolded made this a walk in the park for him. With Roses and May and Azeri being only nursed along just behind him through slow-to-moderate fractions, Ghostzapper had plenty left to sprint home in an excellent 23.64 while the far-behind closers were spinning their wheels. Pleasantly Perfect did not run the race he did a year ago and only repeated his Pacific Classic, again beating Perefct Drift by about a length. The Jockey Club Gold Cup was exposed for the glorified Grade 2 it was this year, yielding the 10th, 11th and 12th finishers.
Fun fact: Azeri was the last of 14 runners in the Cup races who made their last start at Keeneland, a group that put up a dismal 14: 0-0-1 record yesterday.
I couldn't have had the late pick-four yesterday without a $1 Ouija Board-all-all-all ticket for $892, but $46,791.20 for $2 was pretty sweet for something that began with an odds-on winner, and nearly five times higher than the $9884.20 pick three without Ouija Board.
Several national newspaper and website headlines referred to Ghostzapper's Classic victory as an "upset." He was the favorite. But there obviously were no Ultra Pick Six tickets alive to him, since 5 of 6 was the best anyone could do. According to Breeders' cup officials, though, there was one ticket alive to two horses in the finale: Roses in May and Pleasantly Perfect. No matter how good a tough-beat story you have from yesterday, it doesn't match the poor guy who ran second and third - after using Singletary, Wilko and Better Talk Now -- for what would have been well over $2 million.
The best thing you can do after a day like yesterday is to get right back on the horse. It's a little bit of a comedown after Breeders' Cup day, but there's an itsy-bitsy carryover today at Aqueduct, and the favorite in the first leg is trained by Bobby Frankel and ridden by Javier Castellano.
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