Horsemen and Horseplayers: What's Your Real Handicapping and Horse Racing IQ?
Steve Sharp
September 21, 2008
Be honest now: Can you cite real statistics or objective data (not personal opinion or anecdotes!) that answers the following questions with a fair degree of certainty?
1. When assessing a racehorse´s winning chances, which horseman is more important, the trainer or the jockey?
2. Is a racehorse´s "speed" more important than its "class"? Or vice versa?
3. Which factors or characteristics indicate that a racehorse is likely to regress, or "bounce," in its next race?
4. Your trainer´s anxious to race your horse after a week´s layoff. How often do horses actually win after such a short absence from the track? What´s the ideal layoff window for winning racehorses?
5. What are the winning chances of a recently-claimed horse?
6. Is it smarter to bet the horse with the same rider aboard or a new one? How important is jockey stability on a racehorse?
7. Do higher-level winning racehorses exhibit different characteristics than lower-level claimers?
8. Which common characteristics do long shots share?
9. Is there an objective method that can be used to determine a racehorse´s true "class"?
10. What chance does a filly or mare really have against the boys? A maiden against winners? A three-year-old against older horses? A shipper against home-based horses?
11. What are the actual winning chances of a horse entered at the same class level as its last race?
In my book, "Fast Horses, Fast Money: The Complete Guide to Quarter Horse Racing," I tried to provide objective answers to all of the above questions.
As a college educator with an advanced degree, I realize the timeless truth behind the old adage, "Knowledge is power." The gift of intelligence motivates our perpetual quest for knowledge, separating us from other species.
When I visit the racetrack, however—and enter the handicapping zone—I am often reminded of how much we horseplayers simply do not know.
Ironically, every handicapper is ultimately handicapped—intellectually speaking.
Sure, we´re inundated with a barrage of facts—jockey and trainer win percentages, speed indexes, class performance data, fractional times, breeding information, lifetime earnings, and other stray bits and pieces of the complex handicapping puzzle.
We have tons of information to work with…but no real way to evaluate or rank the actual importance of the information. Simply examining data or facts is not handicapping—ultimately a final judgment must be made about the value or relative importance of the individual facts.
It's kind of like the history buff who knows all the facts and figures about the Vietnam War--the names of the major battles, the number of wounded and dead soldiers, the dates and places and statistics--but doesn't know what caused the war itself. Incomplete knowledge.
Though I don´t claim to have read every single piece of handicapping literature, I´m not aware of a professional handicapper or published writer who has taught us exactly how to make that final judgment based on measurable, objective data. (Not personal opinion or anecdotal information.)
How is all this handicapping data connected, for Pete´s sake?
Is there a big star around which everything revolves? Or just random facts?
Which handicapping factors are relatively subordinate? Or dominant?
Until we know the true rank or value of each handicapping factor, we are condemned to make crude, uneducated "guesses" at the betting windows.