The agony of defeat and the thrill of victory

Figure 1

This year’s Maryland Millions Day occurs on a crisp sunny early fall day, and comes a couple of weeks before the Breeders Cup. The event is mostly about providing big stakes for Maryland breds, and other horses that tend to run in allowance or open claimer level meets on the Maryland-Delaware-Pennsylvania circuit.

As such, the plurality of the horses are unfamiliar to me. But that seemed like a fun handicapping challenge. One of the most difficult things is to unlearn bias – both pro and con – that you can develop on horses you see often. Maryland Millions Day, with a few exceptions, dispels that difficulty.

I focused on Race 4, run at 1 1/8 m on the turf. A Turf Starter Allowance. And Race 8, at 1 mile on the turf. These were fullish fields, and I cut down my handicapping task by discarding far outside posts, which did not altogether work.

I used the Beyer graph feature of the classic DRF Formulator to eyeball the field’s relative speed figures. It is not failsafe but it is useful guide to relative speed and form. It is a Adobe Flash client, and I have no idea if it will carry forward in another format when Chrome (Google) closes the door on Flash at the end of the year. Now back to our show.

Besides Beyers and Beyer pattern, criteria for selection included Last quarter, form this year, success at this distance, time form pace positioning, class, a review of recent running lines. That got us down to about 3 horses – after checking the Maryland cappers, I added one more. At that point, besides viewing a couple of their recent races, it becomes something of a crap shoot “with feeling”.

In race 4 I lit upon Martini Kid and Son of Aponi. The former turned out to be a prohibitive crowd favorite, set to pay a mere $1.30 on a dollar if it won. So I canceled that bet. I doubled up on Son of Aponi (7-1), then; but, t’would have been nobler to accompany the win bet with a place bet as, you guessed it, the horse came in second.

My thoughts were that Jorge Vargas Jr. could take Martini Kid back but not too far back, and reap the benefit of speed up front (which would be led unsurprisingly by a steed named Going to the Lead); that the horse was in good form.

But again, in the immortal words of Harvey Pack, “Rare is the man who is still alive who made a living at 3 to 5,” so I cancelled on that one. Son of Aponi was cutting back, had class, had been in form (driving) in recent events, and was young with room to improve. Now to the running…


For Martini Kids part his actual running was tepid – the line saying he was buffeted early, the caller saying he was lingering in the stretch. Son of Aponi ran well, the jockey may have just moved a bit too soon. The race was won by #11, by a neck, Bowsprint, one of those contenders that did not make my final cut, in some part because of his outside post.


Race 8 – THE MARYLAND MILLION TURF - went a bit better for Racetrack Romero. Used the same methods described above. Played Mr d’Angelo, who had run well despite a bad trip in last. The favorite was Taxable Goods who faded.

In the running, “Mr d’Angelo rated back soon after the break and was allowed to settle, raced outside a rival nearing the far turn, eased out and moved up between runners approaching the lane, swung out seven wide then straightened for the drive, leveled off forged past …” to win by 1 ¾ L and pay $33 and change for $2 bet. The performance was strong and stirring. While unable to catch the winner, outside horses gained the play and show spots to create a $500+ $1 exacta and a $2000+ .50 cent trifecta. They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. The Figure 1 at the top of the page and the YouTube thumbnail below show the frozen photo for third spot.



Truth be told I also played trainer Michael Trombetta’s Cannon’s Roar, a reasonable contender type, who seemed on paper to have a promising stalking/staying combo of talent. On the same paper (based on TimeForm Pace numbers, Mr. D'Angelo magically appeared near the lead at the wire, just like in real life. The trouble line for Cannon's Road said he may have clipped heels, and in the replay you can see him just about stop. He finished ahead of Taxable Goods.

The idea of Maryland Millions Day was conjured by Jim McKay, a sporting figure who, like this horse playing bum, is diminishing into the twilight of time. Together with Roone Arledge he created ABCs Wide World of Sports in the early 1960s, capitalizing on advances in communications technology to bring a vast menu of sports to US audiences that had heretofore only known Baseball-Football-Basketball-and-Boxing. Jim McKay hipped me to Phil Hill and Dan Gurney and automobile racing. I followed him as well as he also covered the Kentucky Derby for many years. His great love, however, was Maryland Racing, which gained a greater spotlight when it became one of the early Million Dollar Days of racing, with his impetus.

We hope our picture of some ups and downs today disclose to you some of the emotion of life - that is, the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory.

The general downwardness of existence was the end case theme on the day as I saw 3-year-old Satchell Paige pull up hard and for the last time in a race at the Bad Bardo of Race Horses - Santa Anita - the site of the upcoming Breeders Cup, which might be worth skipping. Don't look back, something might be gaining on you! - R.R.