What I'll do first is go over our approach to each race as well as our Pick 6 strategy as a whole. Then we'll talk about how close we came to hitting something worth talking about.
The Mile
This has long been my favorite BC race….because it's on the grass, always draws a big field and is always run "honestly" with a fast pace up front, usually producing quite formful results even at generous prices. I also like the Mile because I have done very well over the years in isolating the winner from a small group of horses near the top of our rankings.
This year's BC Mile was severely complicated by the post position draw. The two prime European contenders, Oasis Dream and Six Perfections, drew posts 10 and 13 respectively, which later became 9 and 12 when Sarafan scratched. Still, winning from outside of post 8 at a mile on the grass at Santa Anita is no easy task. In races at one mile on the turf at SA since 1995, 61 of 66 were won by posts 1 through 8, two by the 9, two by the 10 and one by the 11. Posts 12 and up were a combined 0 for 10 over that same period. Given the size of the Mile field, the relatively small size of the SA turf course (Of all the Breeders' Cup venues, only Gulfstream's turf course is also inside of a one mile main track) I felt that our best strategic move would be to use the Mile as a "deep coverage" race, going with just one key horse and a lot of backups. This approach seemed especially appropriate since we had no "dominant" horse in this race that looked like a runaway standout.
By using just one key horse in the Mile, we'd have a lot more resources left to invest in multiple key horses later on in the Pick 6, where we'd have much better chance to score with our keys in races that are usually much less subject to the chaos associated with a large field going around two tight turns. Keep in mind that our top three ranked horses in the Mile were starting from post positions that accounted for only 5 wins from 79 starts in the last 8 years.
So which horse do we key? Given that Santa Anita's Oak Tree Mile winner had won the BC Mile in 3 of the last 4 years, two of which were won from very bad posts at tracks other than Santa Anita (Silic at Gulfstream and War Chant at Churchill) it became somewhat of a "no brainer" to use Designed For Luck as our single key horse. Not only did he win the Oak Tree Mile, beating local favorite Special Ring, but Designed For Luck was well drawn in post 2 and would be ridden by Pat Valenzuela, who had won the BC Mile once before on Opening Verse in '91 at big odds.
As for our backup horses in the Mile, I felt that going a total of 9 deep in the race would be enough to move us forward, given the steep drop in our rankings after our 9th ranked horse, Touch Of The Blues at 265 to Decarchy at 210. As you saw, "Blues" ran a huge race at 12-1, only to get run down near the wire by the 3 year old Filly, Six Perfections, our 3rd ranked horse. She got a great ride from Jerry Bailey to overcome the post 12 "ofer" and pay $12.60 for the win.
I have to say that Six Perfections' trainer, Frenchman Pascal Bary, knows what he's doing. The 10 week layoff since 8/17 obviously didn't bother her. I had been rather curious as to why Bary chose to replace the horse's regular jockey, Thierry Thulliez, who won the Mile last year for Bary on Domedriver and who also won on Six Perfections in her 8/17 final prep in France. I found the answer in a Thoroughbred Times online article, in which Bary was quoted as saying that "you can use a French Jockey for a Breeders' Cup race at Belmont or Arlington, (with the wide turns), but at a track like Santa Anita, if you can get the best American jockey, you must do it". Getting Bailey turned out to be a stroke of genius, but I can't help but wonder how many folks who bet Six Perfections to win or keyed her in exotics began sprinting back to the mutuel windows to cancel their tickets when the horse refused to load before the start….her continuing antics finally causing Jerry to jump off her behind the starting gate. As her trainer said later, "she's a fighter….even with people". So we start off the Pick 6 by catching Six Perfections as a backup horse.
Meanwhile our key horse, Designed For Luck, did manage to beat local rival Special Ring by a neck. The only problem was the 6 horses that finished in front of them.
The Sprint
Always a tough race, this year's edition proved to be no exception. Usually you can get a bit of an edge in a west coast BC Sprint by keying the winner of the Ancient Title sprint at Santa Anita, the winners of which had captured the last two BC Sprints in Southern California in '93 and '97. But this year's Ancient Title winner, Avanzado, was kept out of the BC Sprint because his owners didn't want to pay the supplemental entry fees for not originally having nominated him to the Breeders' Cup.
Still, we found that our top two ranked horses, Aldebaran and Shake You Down, gave us the best closer and the best speed horse in the race. I liked Aldebaran for having run well in the Met Mile, which has been used as a stepping stone to a win in the BC Sprint by Gulch, Dancing Spree and Cherokee Run to name three. Aldebaran was also coming off a win in the Forego Handicap at Saratoga on 8/31, the same prep won by Orientate en route to his BC Sprint win at Arlington last year. Shake you down had won 6 consecutive races on fast tracks at 6 furlongs, including 3 graded stakes, since being claimed in March by Scott Lake. In July he had a dominant win at Calder in the Smile Sprint stake, a race also won by Orientated last year by 6 lengths. On 7/12, Shake You Down won it by 8, handily beating his Saratoga sloppy track conqueror-to-be Private Horde, in the Smile. Certainly no slop in the forecast at Santa Anita.
We felt confident going with these two as our keys in the Sprint, along with 6 backups consisting of Midas Eyes, Private Horde, Bluesthestandard, Captain Squire, Cajun Beat and Valid Video.
Shortly after the break it was apparent that Shake You Down was not going to breeze to the front and put it on cruise control, getting heavy pressure inside from Zavata. Meanwhile, Aldebaran was running dead last at the first quarter and was going to have to sprout wings to catch this field.
If we weren't going to get a key here, we needed a "bomb"…..and we got one in the form of 22-1 shot Cajun Beat, our 7th ranked horse. He laid close to the pace from post 11 and drew away in the stretch like a champ. Our 5th ranked horse, Bluesthestandard, ran second at 13-1. Although we didn't land a key in this race, we knew that Cajun Beat had just "blown up" a ton of Pick 6 syndicates ……but not ours. We corralled this $47.60 winner like an aircraft carrier flight deck stops an F-16. This result proved once again that the BC Sprint is a race where you always have to go deep with your backups.
Filly & Mare Turf
While it felt great to be alive in a $4,500,000 Pick 6 pool after two legs with a $47.60 horse in the mix, we'd used up both of our two allotted backups in these first two legs. From now on we had to be right with our keys…..four times in a row. Not an impossible task given the number of quality keys we had coming up, but from here on everything would have to go right.
I realized that this race was a "killer". It looked very evenly matched, requiring the deepest coverage of any of the BC races. But we also had to make sure we hit a key in this race, especially if we were 0 for 2 with our keys going into this leg, which turned out to be the case.
Tates Creek was an obvious key, having just won the Gr.I Yellow Ribbon at the distance over the Santa Anita turf course last out. Tates was 3 for 4 on the SA Turf, having lost only to stablemate Megahertz two starts back. Islington was quite simply the best turf mare in Europe, winning the 12 furlong Yorkshire Oaks under 130 pounds prior to finishing 3rd by a neck to the boys, or shall we say "the men"….High Chaparral and Falbrav in the Irish Champion Stakes. Musical Chimes was gaining tons of ground and just missed catching Tates in the Yellow Ribbon and was now getting blinkers on and first time lasix for Neil Drysdale. Heat Haze had won the Gr. I Beverly D. at Arlington and was getting Jerry Bailey back aboard. We made those four our keys. Arguably we should have made our 4th ranking horse Dimitrova a key as well, but it would be far too expensive to use a 5th key and go 10 deep in this race including backups. The only two horses I felt comfortable tossing entirely were Riskaverse, who had lost 5 straight stakes going into this race, and L'Ancresse, who'd gotten drilled by Islington in the aforementioned Yorkshire Oaks and lost a European Grade 3 race decisively after that. Her last out win at the Curragh wasn't even graded.
As it turned out, our mighty Islington was "life and death" to prevail by a neck over the 48-1 L'Ancresse, who was getting first lasix, as was Islington. Bobby Frankel's powerful trio of Tates Creek, Heat Haze and Megahertz failed to hit the board. We'd finally booted a key home with the $7.80 Islington in a race where we needed to get one, keeping us in the Pick 6 hunt…..barely.
The Juvenile
We had used a "ton" of our resources in the F/M turf by going 10 deep and barely staying alive with Islington. It was a relief to finally have a race that, at least on paper, appeared to come down to four horses. Cuvee was the Grade I stake winner and the speed fig wonder boy of this bunch, running far faster figures than anyone in each of his last two races. His winning margins of 7+ and 8+ lengths in those last two races suggested he hadn't really been tested in them. From a time off perspective, he'd last run on 9/14, giving him the same 6 week rest that Vindication had prior to winning last year's BC Juvenile. Cuvee was also over Chapel Royal in our eyes. Next in our pecking order was Tiger Hunt, who'd run a strong second from off the pace against Keeneland Breeders' Futurity winner Eurosilver, who was put away for the year after that race. What better complement to our two speed horses than to have a quality closer coming out of a two turn Grade 2 who was getting Pat Day for the first time. Finally, we needed a local horse….after all this was Santa Anita, where the two prior runnings of the BC Juvenile were won by horses coming off Santa Anita wins….Capote by 1 3/4 in the '86 Norfolk and Brocco by 8 lengths in a 7 furlong $32,000 nw1 allowance race in '93. This year it seemed obvious that the local horse with the biggest chance was the D. Wayne Lukas trained Race For Glory, coming off a 7 length score in the $75,000 Cavonnier stakes for Cal-Breds. He was a $600,000 Keeneland sale purchase coming off a 6 on the Ragozin Sheets, a figure surpassed in this field only by Cuvee's 5 1/4.
By going four deep in the Juvenile, we'd used all the horses that fell within our scoring range by all 19 prior Juvenile winners, all the way down to 1999 winner Anees' lowest score of 207. After Race For Glory at 205, the next number was Siphonizer at 179. But by the time we got to the Juvenile last Saturday, it no longer mattered which horses we'd used as backups. We needed a key….we needed Cuvee….from post 12.
Knowing that a lot could ultimately be riding on Cuvee if we used him as our single key in the Juvenile, I'd purposely delayed putting in our Pick 6 wager until I watched Halfbridled win the BC Juvenile Fillies fairly easily from post 14. That was all I needed to see….if it was possible to win from post 14 at a mile and a sixteenth on the main track, Cuvee's 12 post had a real shot as well. In fact post 12 had won once in 6 starts at the distance since 1995. But things did not go well for Cuvee, who was wide early and basically spit the bit on the turn for home, finishing dead last. Jerry Bailey couldn't work the same "bad post magic" for Cuvee that he had earlier for with Six Perfections.
So at this point our quest for 6 was over. We were now playing for 5.
Oh, the phone just rang. It's horse owner Alex Trebeck, who has a final Jeopardy answer to pass on to us….
"He was the ONLY horse in the 2003 Breeders' Cup Juvenile to have won a race of any kind at the BC Juvenile distance of a mile and a sixteenth in his most recent start"
Do do do…..do do do do do…….time's up…..any guesses?….the correct question is….
What is "Action This Day"?
Yes folks…this horse won a maiden race by a nose at the BC Juvenile distance of a mile and a sixteenth in his second lifetime start at Santa Anita on 9/28 en route to his clear cut victory in the Juvenile at odds of 26-1. Alex Solis, who of course rode two BC winners for Dick Mandella last Saturday, had ridden Action This Day in each of his first two career starts. But for the Juvenile he chose to ride Mandella's more accomplished horse, Minister Eric, who had run much faster than Action This Day in each of his last two starts, including the Grade 2 Del Mar Futurity at 7 furlongs last out. Alex won't get fooled by that one again. Neither will we.
BC Turf
This was the easiest race of all from a handicapping and Pick 6 strategy standpoint, with four obvious horses, each of which I felt had about the same chance to win. After those four it was a steep drop in our rankings to the rest of the field. Our top four were no surprise….Sulamani, Storming Home, High Chaparral and Falbrav. Four keys, no backups. We were mighty fortunate that High Chaparral got his nose on the wire with Johar to keep us alive for five.
BC Classic
This race shaped up quite similar to the Turf in that it wasn't a "spread" race. My initial read on the Classic was a five key, no backup scenario with Medaglia d'Oro, Perfect Drift, Ten Most Wanted, Congaree and Pleasantly Perfect. The only problem was that it would be incredibly expensive to use all 5 horses as keys without going back and cutting at least one key or a slew of backups from the earlier races. To do a 5-0 here with the key/backup scenario we'd set up on the earlier races would cost a whopping $30,240….out of the question. So we simply had to get the number of keys in the Classic down to 4 to fit our bankroll.
I'd been hoping like hell that Congaree would finally succumb to the quarter crack and scratch, which would enable us use the other 4 horses as keys, but no such luck. We had to demote one horse to backup status to make the play work. I wasn't about to play Russian Roulette with a Bob Baffert horse at Santa Anita. We chose to demote Pleasantly Perfect to backup status for several reasons. One is that he'd run twice at a mile and a quarter in Grade I company in his last 5 starts and ran 4th both times. The most recent of those two races was the Santa Anita Handicap on 3/1, in which Congaree whipped him by 6 lengths. Congaree also had beaten him in his prior race, the 9 furlong San Antonio, also at Santa Anita. Another problem was Pleasantly Perfect's recent speed figures, which were considerably slower than our other "key candidates", whether you used Thorograph, Ragozin, BRIS or Beyer figs as the benchmark. Finally I took a look at the horse Pleasantly Perfect beat in his final prep, the Goodwood. We're talking about Fleetstreet Dancer, who was entered in the $150,000 Seabiscuit stakes last Saturday….race 11 on the BC card. He was 0 for 8 in 2003, his last win coming in a $62,500 optional claimer almost a year ago. He was not even the top choice of the DRF consensus for this ungraded $150,000 stake.
So by going with 4 keys and 1 backup in the Classic instead of 5 keys, we could get the play done for $25,248, toward the upper end of our budget. After taking one last look at the play, I felt that we should add the Aiden O'Brien trained Hold That Tiger as a backup horse in the Classic, which would bring us up to our final investment of $26,304. "Tiger" had run second to Mineshaft in the Woodward on 9/6 and was well rested going into the Classic. By including him in the mix, we had every horse covered who had run a Beyer fig of 110 or better in one of his last two starts….and we hopefully wouldn't have to worry about getting beaten by a Aidan O'Brien trained longshot, as nearly happened in the F/M Turf.
Whenever you play a Pick 6, I've found that good handicapping and an astute betting strategy will only take you so far. You also need a little break from the racing gods. In the Classic, what we got was an "anti-break"….times 2. As our two speed horses, Congaree and Medaglia d'Oro were setting up for their duel on for the lead, our two "tactical speed" keys with the best chance of catching them were, to borrow an expression from ESPN, "pimp slapped" by an out-of-control Funny Cide, who arguably didn't even belong in the race off an August 3rd layoff. So with our "tactical speed" keys Perfect Drift and Ten Most Wanted having been creamed by Funny Cide & Julie, essentially taken out of the race, it was up to our two speed horses to get the job done. Needless to say, their front end duel took its toll and almost as if on cue, Pleasantly Perfect came roaring down the track to win comfortably at 14-1.
Time to get into some financials. There were only four Pick 6 tickets alive going into the Classic, one each on Medaglia D'Oro, Congaree, Ten Most Wanted and the winner, Pleasantly Perfect. NO one was alive for 6 out of 6 with Perfect Drift. Had he won, a winning ticket on him for what would have been the top tier prize of 5 out of 6, for about $30,000……again, for hitting just FIVE. That figure of $30,000 is based on the roughly $77,000 Pleasantly Perfect would have paid in a "no one hits six" scenario. There were actually 48 consolation tickets worth $18,663 each with Pleasantly Perfect. Had Medaglia D'Oro, Congaree or Ten Most Wanted won, we'd have hit for 5 of 6 as a consolation payoff underneath a single winning Pick 6 ticket of $2,687,611.60, which was the actual winning payoff. With those three horses the consolations would have paid anywhere from $3,500 to $8,000, using the $18,663 as well as each horse's final odds as a guide.
