Profitable Horse Handicapping: Part 2

All kinds of bumping and jostling goes on in the starting gate before a race ever runs - horses don’t exactly like being herded into the giant iron contraption and some are actually claustrophobic.

When you get 10 or more horses in the starting gate at once crazy things can happen. One horse banging and crashing around in the gate might not only affect its own performance, it may cause a chain reaction among the other horses.

Before the gate even opens you should use your binoculars or the TV screen to watch what is going on during the loading process. If one or two horses are thrashing around (hopefully not the ones you bet on), they can hurt themselves bad enough to run poorly, yet not be scratched.

Additionally, while these horses are thrashing around, lying down, rearing up, banging their head or whatever, they can not only injure the jockey but also influence the degree of effort a jockey might put forth on the horse in the actual running of the race. A sore jockey on a banged up crazy horse doesn’t normally produce great results.

Sometimes unruly gate behavior is recorded in the official charts orthe Daily Racing Form Past Performance comment lines as “fractiousgate” but often it is not recorded at all. Make sure you note this typeof behavior on your program. If a horse is always fractious in the gateit won’t make much difference, but if a horse is normally a good actorin the starting gate, they could come back to run much better the nexttime.

The start of a race is much more important in a sprint than in a route race. There is often time to recover from a bad start in a route race, whereas in a sprint race the break from the gate can mean the difference between winning and losing. This is why it especially important when handicapping a sprint too make sure you identify which horses need the lead or must be close early, in order to run their best race.

When the horses come out of the gate you want to watch for anything out of the ordinary, particularly something that affects these “need-to-lead types.” Horses get checked, shut off, bumped, steadied, veer in and out, stumble, refuse to break and sometimes simply break slow among other things. If the affected horse is a need-the-lead type, a poor start can make it a non-contender. In the case of a come-from-behind type, the trouble should be noted but not rated as severely.

You’d be surprised how many handicappers treat trouble at the start the same for need-the-lead types as they do for off-the-pace runners, when the trouble actually affects one type of runner much more than the other. So while everyone else is over betting the off-the-pace types because of a poor start in their previous race, you’ll know better and wait for the speedsters that experienced early trouble to run back.

Also, as you watch races at any particular track over a period of time, even a few weeks, you will notice that some jockeys are absolute pros at breaking a horse sharply from the gate while others are terrible. You must get to know which jockeys are which, as they tend to repeat themselves over and over.

If a sprinting need-the-lead type breaks a step slow, gets bumped and fades to finish seventh, he might do the same again with a poor gate jockey. If the horse is retaining a normally capable jockey or even better, if the horse is getting a switch to a top gate rider, the chances of that horse winning are much better. This happens every day at every track in North America, yet many handicappers miss it.

In summary, your best bet is to look for need-the-lead types in sprints that had enough trouble at the start as to prevent them from getting on or near the lead. In a sprint race, comments such as bumped start, checked break, stumbled start, steadied break, shut off break, broke slow or even broke step slow, could mean a horse never really had a chance. You’ll know for sure if you watch the actual race or replay videos and make note of these kinds of horses.

Many handicappers do not take notes, and doing so can give you an edge on the crowd, especially when these horses come back to run with no trouble comments in their Past Performance lines.

In the part three of this series of articles we’ll look at the next key area of a race you must watch in order to spot future profits - the turns.