Derby Odds

Mike Battaglia has published his morning line on the 2009 Kentucky Derby.

Battaglia is widely acknowledged as the best in the business.

Post Position	Horse	Jockey	Trainer	Odds
1	West Side Bernie	Stewart Elliott	Kelly Breen	30-1
2	Musket Man	Eibar Coa	Derek Ryan	20-1
3	Mr. Hot Stuff	John Velazquez	Eoin Harty	30-1
4	Advice	Rene Douglas	Todd Pletcher	30-1
5	Hold Me Back	Kent Desormeaux	Bill Mott	15-1
6	Friesan Fire	Gabriel Saez	J. Larry Jones	5-1
7	Papa Clem	Rafael Bejarano	Gary Stute	20-1
8	Mine That Bird	Calvin Borel	Bennie Woolley Jr.	50-1
9	Join in the Dance	Chris DeCarlo	Todd Pletcher	50-1
10	Regal Ransom	Alan Garcia	Saeed bin Suroor	30-1
11	Chocolate Candy	Mike Smith	Jerry Hollendorfer	20-1
12	General Quarters	Julien Leparoux	Tom McCarthy	20-1
13	I Want Revenge	Joe Talamo	Jeff Mullins	3-1
14	Atomic Rain	Joe Bravo	Kelly Breen	50-1
15	Dunkirk	Edgar Prado	Todd Pletcher	4-1
16	Pioneerof the Nile	Garrett Gomez	Bob Baffert	4-1
17	Summer Bird	Chris Rosier	Tim Ice	50-1
18	Nowhere to Hide	Shaun Bridgmohan	Nick Zito	50-1
19	Desert Party	Ramon Dominguez	Saeed bin Suroor	15-1
20	Flying Private	Robby Albarado	D. Wayne Lukas	50-1

I'll be posting my handicap on HorseCalc and here Friday night.

Glancing at the past performances, you have to respect Pioneer of the Nile. Since Baffert took over as trainer he is 4 for 4. I Want Revenge is 0 for 2 against him. IWR and Papa Clem were both run out of Southern California by Pioneer...Can they beat him now?

Good Luck.

Shoot the 7 and I Got It!

Is there anything you hate worse than watching your trifecta run 2,3,4 behind some longshot winner that you didn't figure? That's when even the most optimistic of us start suspecting foul play.

I just watched two races in a row where the seven horse wiped out scrumptious superfectas by romping to an easy win. The saddle cloth number doesn't matter, just the fact that there was no way in my world view that horse would hit the board, much less annihilate the field.

For Southern California, I started a text file I call cheaters.txt just for this type of horse. I'm not going to post it because it's an incomplete work in progress. Maybe they're not "cheaters," either but something was weird according to my race perceptions.

So far, two theories stand out:

1) If the trainer and the owner are "connected" (same guy, same family, his farm) and the odds are good, look out.

2) If the jockey is J Rosario and the odds are good, look out.

This isn't going to work at small tracks where the trainers and owners are nearly all inter-related. Hell, it may not make money at a big track where trainers have many clients -- it just seems like it could.

:PS
The Pamplemousse is out of the Kentucky Derby and will likely miss six months of racing.