Serious horse players spend a lot of time looking for excuses. Seldom will a race go by that a handicapper isn’t forced to assess a sub par performance by a horse that may otherwise be an attractive wager. Indeed, much of what shapes a bettor’s perceptions of any particular race comes from reasons to look past failures in the previous running lines of horses that, without the benefit of such creative excuses, would be labeled pretenders and tossed immediately.
Missteps out of the gate, wide trips, off tracks, fractious pre-race behavior, too hot, too cold, not enough pace in the race, too much pace in the race… the list is endless, limited only by one’s imagination. Once, years ago, I was at Laurel Racecourse discussing the entries for an upcoming allowance race with an old timer, who spent every day doing what he loved the most, losing money at the track. I was high on a particular four-year old named Prince Stanley, who I had been chasing for several races, excusing one out-of-the-money effort after another. The wise old man asked incredulously what about my selection could possibly appeal to me. I responded with earnest the colt had now run on dead rails three straight times and his odds were double digits. My friend looked seriously at me over his glasses and said simply: “… a horse finds trouble more than once in a while, he brings it with him, and big odds don’t make him run any faster.” Plenty inside the DC beltway pay consultants good money for wisdom not near as profitable. Of course I listened to none of it and was tearing up my tickets as Prince Stanley finished with interest to grab fourth after having to check and alter course, assuring I would probably misplace my faith in him yet again. It’s important to note here this tendency works the other way as well, with short-priced favorites put up to scrutiny, every effort made to diminish their past victories as part of an effort to embolden taking a stand against them. Either way, racetrack school is an expensive education, and nobody is spared the expense.
Andrew Beyer is one of horse racing’s most articulate proponents, and the Washington Post resident handicapper for decades until the position was eliminated due to the general public’s growing disinterest in the sport. He once quipped had he spent as many hours reading law books as the DRF Past Performances he would have been picked to the Supreme Court. Amen brother.
Beyer’s enduring contribution to the sport are “speed figures,” actually trademarked in his name, meant to quantify a horse’s standing with a single inarguable number time itself produces free of most subjective vagueries, excuses be damned! Yet and still, in 2002, when a horse named War Emblem produced a 112 figure in the Illinois Derby three weeks before the Kentucky Derby, which was head and shoulders above the rest of the field, Beyer’s fealty to his own gospel was put to the test.
Here it was on a silver platter; finally, a horse sure to be long odds, exhibiting an overwhelming edge over 17 other entrants based on the analytical model Beyer himself had developed. Not only was his method going to be showcased, he was going to get rich while it happened. Only one problem… Beyer couldn’t get himself to believe his own methodology. War Emblem had never run anything approaching a 112 before the race in Illinois. So Beyer set out to convince himself it was a fluke. Surely there had to be extenuating circumstances. Souped up track, the colt was left all alone on the lead, a short home stretch, a host of reasons to doubt the speed figure War Emblem produced. By the time they went postward on the first Saturday in May, Beyer had convinced himself the winner of Derby 128 was going to be Essence of Dubai, a prospect with powerful Middle Eastern connections but no recent Beyer figure to consider because he had prepped for the race in Dubai, a long and thus far futile route to take to Louisville. After a week of talking himself off the horse his own unique handicapping process pinpointed as a major standout, finding any excuse possible to undermine his own conclusions, Beyer ended up siding with an animal his metrics couldn’t even assess, prepping for the race in a fashion that had never yet succeeded.
War Emblem grabbed the lead right out of the gate, jockey Victor Espinoza setting an aggressive but sensible pace, and never looked back, winning the roses in a scintillating 2:01. A $2 bet returned $43 to those who put their faith in Beyer speed figures. Essence of Dubai is still running, and he burned all of Beyer’s money, leaving him to explain in his post-race column how he, not only ignored, but actively sabatoged, one of the greatest opportunities his handicapping system ever presented him. To add salt to the wound he spent the two-week run up to the Preakness finding more reasons why War Emblem was fortunate in Louisville and may have trouble in Baltimore. War Emblem paid $7.60 after jogging home to win the Preakness. Beyer’s disgrace was complete.
What’s the moral to all of this, past the utility of heeding a very very wise man’s advice that “a passion for golf and horse racing will leave one most always pissed off?” It’s simply this: believe what you see and what people say because once that no longer suffices as one’s primary filter all bets are off. Reality, and our own ability to process what unwinds before us, is its own most powerful argument.
As we depart 2018, a year the POTUS told more than 5000 certain and verifiable lies, we’d do well to spend more time embracing the tangible and less time searching for reasons to doubt it. Last year can aptly be called the year of the gaslight, when ridiculous explanations, pronounced with enough certainty, exclipsed realities on full view, recorded for all to see and hear, and fully informed large blocs of citizens determined to give full sway to cognitive biases that only reinforced beliefs in the best of their champions, even as events unfolded to provide them otherwise documented proof of their worst.
Unhinged cops mercilessly beating and shooting unarmed suspects… fully recorded, then vigorously defended by legions of commenters imploring the assailents be given a benefit of the doubt only possible by refusing to accept what was established public record. Not just rare and isolated incidents, but repeated and ugly examples of brutality.
Mass shootings, carried out with military grade weaponry, only to time and again be classified as aberrations perpetrated by outliers, the killing device irrelevant. A preposterous proposition put forward by whole swaths of lawmakers and commentators that vague intentions of the founding fathers should obviate repeated slaughter. The notion that arming teachers is more viable than banning weapons Ronald Reagan declared dangers to public well being.
Kellyanne Conway ad nauseum delivering shameless “alternative facts” in order to make more palatable Trump’s daily assaults on reason and decency, even as Andrew Cuomo somehow allows that there is actually something worth debating.
Legions of ridiculous GOP lawmakers contorting to make sense of White House statements and tweets that often directly contradict what was said during the previous news cycle. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, ever the loyal liar, staring askew at reporters reading word for word statements she just denied were actually said. “No, the President didn’t mean he would own a shutdown; that’s not what I heard!”
We appear to be fast approaching a “post-reality” existence, where the five senses are under fire as reliable gauges of truth and actuality. I suppose that means our reliance on narratives spoon fed by TV and radio producers, not to mention internet content providers, has eclipsed basic human instincts, shading everything, even what we witness in the clearest, most direct terms in favor of pondering explanations the storyline is capable of accepting.
In other words, our President may soon actually be able to go out on 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, only to merely spark debate on CNN, old Kellyanne imploring us to keep an open mind and beseeching the MSM to stick to stories Americans really care about. Of course, that’s a day to dread because when it arrives odds America will remain a going democratic concern will be long indeed, and no manner of creative handicapping will make it a good bet. Make 2019 the year of what’s obvious. BC