Its All About The Stats!
Y’all ever wonder what would happen if today’s handicappers had to handicap a race without trainer stats and percentages staring them right in the face on the past performances?
I’ll tell you what I think would happen. We’d have a whole lot more handicappers actually handicapping.
I got a story for you.
We gotta go back to around 1999. If memory serves, it was Hollywood Park in Southern California. My good friend Nicholas J. Hines and I were conducting a seminar for a major racing event. Nick and I go way back. We met in 1994, he trained for us, and we did a bunch of handicapping shows together.
Now, around that time, trainer percentages were being added to the past performances. And Nick, who had enough horse sense to fill up a damn barn, made a statement that stuck with me.
He said something to the effect of, “Putting trainer percentages in the past performances isn’t the good thing everybody thinks it is. The little guy has no chance”
Now, I’m paraphrasing. It’s been damn near 26 years. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, much less every word a man said in 1999. But I remember the point and speaking to Nick this morning, he does as well.
Nick you was right.
And, 26 years late i am adding my two cents - its made handicappers lazier.
Those numbers were supposed to make handicapping easier. Instead, they helped make handicappers lazier.
And before somebody gets their drawers in a wad, I ain’t saying statistics are useless. I’m saying people have gotten so dependent on them that they’ve forgotten how to think for themselves.
Here’s the problem.
We’ve got five-year trainer statistics, overall statistics, jockey statistics, trainer-jockey combinations, first-time starter statistics, and enough percentages to make a damn accountant consider a career change.
But horse racing is a cyclical game!
Horses go in and out of form. Trainers go through hot streaks and cold streaks. Some outfits get rolling and win races in bunches. Others can’t get a horse to run through a wet paper bag for three weeks, then suddenly they’re winning everything in sight.
So why in the hell am I supposed to be so impressed by what a trainer did over the last five years?
I want to know who’s winning NOW.
Who has the horses running well right now? Who has figured something out? Who’s moving horses forward? Who’s cold as a busted refrigerator?
And who the hell decided five years was the magic number anyway? Was there a congressional hearing? Did somebody draw it out of a hat? Did the statistics department throw a dart at the wall?
Because I sure as hell want to know why a five-year average deserves more attention than what’s happening right in front of my face.
The current trend matters. The circumstances matter. The horse matters.
But somewhere along the way, we decided that if a number is printed in a little box beside a trainer’s name, it must be important.
And if it’s a big number, well, hell, just mortgage the house and bet the horse!
That’s how we’ve arrived at this modern handicapping circus, where everybody seems to be looking for the exact same damn thing.
Top trainer. Top jockey. High percentage.
Check ✅, check ✅, and check ✅.
What else do you need? Apparently, nothing. Just punch the ticket and wait for the money to roll in.
First-time starters are a perfect example.
A handicapper sees a horse making its debut and suddenly needs a whole damn intelligence briefing. The horse better have a flashy work tab, a big workout rating, a trainer with a favorable first-time starter percentage, and a jockey-trainer combination that looks like it was blessed by the Pope.
Take away one of those little security blankets, and some folks don't know what to do.
They've got a horse in front of them, but they can't see the horse. They're too busy looking at the numbers surrounding it.
What does the pedigree say? What do the works actually tell you? Does the horse look like it can run? Does the trainer have a reason to have this one ready today? What's the competition? What's the pace scenario?
Those are questions worth asking and we will answer the right questions tonight and tomorrow on Breeders Cup zoom.
But apparently, that's too much work when a percentage can do the thinking for you.
And then there's the so-called Turf Authority.
Some folks follow these people like they're receiving instructions from the Almighty Himself. They'll take somebody's opinion as gospel without stopping to consider one little detail.
The people giving you the information are betting, too.
They have opinions, preferences, agendas, and their own money on the line. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they're just as full of crap as the next fella.
But the minute somebody gets a title, a television appearance, or a following on social media, a whole lot of people stop questioning what they're being told.
That's where this thing gets dangerous.
The information age was supposed to make us smarter. Instead, we've created a world where people can be manipulated into believing just about anything, provided the message is delivered confidently enough and repeated often enough.
The internet has become a hell of a tool for manipulating interest, manufacturing consensus, and getting people to follow a crowd without ever asking why.
I know a guy who consistently brags that he can move mountains.
Well, I'll give him this much: he can sure move a bunch of people who don't seem to realize they're being moved.
And some of those people can actually read, which makes the whole thing even more remarkable.
Of course, reading is becoming something of a lost art. Today's society wants everything in 256 characters or less. Nobody wants to read a long blog. Lord knows nobody wants to crack open a book.
Give 'em a headline, a hot take, and somebody hollering with enough conviction, and they're ready to go.
That's how we end up with handicappers who all sound alike, think alike, and handicap alike.
They've spent so much time listening to their favorite talking heads that they've adopted their opinions as their own.
Take Andy Serling. He's become one of the most recognizable handicapping personalities in New York racing. And you can hear his influence in the way people talk about races and express their opinions.
There's nothing inherently wrong with listening to Andy. He's entitled to his opinion, just like anybody else.
But when you start hearing the same language, the same reasoning, and the same conclusions coming from everybody, you have to wonder how many people are actually doing their own handicapping.
How many are thinking for themselves, and how many are just repeating what they've heard?
And don't get me started on social media.
I'll say this once: Social media can make you a bad handicapper.
I once watched a television personality on an ADW network explain, live on the air, that he liked a horse but went to social media to see if anybody else liked it, too.
He wanted validation.
He said he'd found a couple of people he respected who liked the same horse.
I lost respect for him right then and there.
Now, we're talking about somebody who is supposedly a professional handicapper, making a living giving opinions, and he needed to check with the neighborhood committee before he could feel good about his own pick.
What in the wide world of horse racing is that?
It's definitely not the thrill of being right, and its more agony of defeat before even getting started.
If you've done your homework, studied the race, evaluated the competition, and arrived at an opinion, why do you need a stranger on the internet to pat you on the head and tell you you're a good boy?
I don't need validation from somebody else's opinion, and I sure as hell don't need a percentage to give me permission to like a horse.
I believe in my own work. I believe in my own process. And if I'm wrong, I'll own it.
That's handicapping.
You gather the information, interpret what matters, make a decision, and live with the result.
You don't go looking for a crowd to hide behind in case the horse runs up the track.
And here's another thing I've learned over the years.
I'll take some trainers winning at 15% over certain trainers winning at 25% any day of the week.
Why?
Because a percentage doesn't tell you everything you need to know about a trainer's ability, integrity, or horsemanship. Context matters. Circumstances matter. The quality of the horses matters.
A trainer winning at 15% with limited stock and a bunch of horses who aren't exactly blessed with talent may be doing a hell of a job.
Meanwhile, another trainer can win at 25% with a barn full of expensive horses, favorable opportunities, and circumstances that make the job a whole lot easier.
Those two percentages don't tell the whole story.
But people see 25% versus 15%, and their brains shut down.
Twenty-five is bigger than fifteen. Must be better.
Congratulations, you've mastered third-grade arithmetic. Now try handicapping a horse race.
And social media makes the whole mess worse because it creates the illusion that popularity equals knowledge.
It doesn't.
Some people have an opinion because they've done the work. Others have an opinion because they saw somebody else have one and take my word there is a whole army of them.
Some are genuine. Some are bootlickers. Some are frauds. And some folks have perfected the art of sounding like they know something without ever putting anything of substance on the table.
I've been around long enough to recognize a few of them.
If I see somebody I know is full of hot air endorsing the same horse I've landed on, I might have to take another look at my selection.
Not because their opinion has any value, but because some people have become the kiss of death.
You know the type. They could pick the only horse in the race with four legs and somehow make you nervous about it.
I've seen enough of those folks in my lifetime. I don't need them rubbing off on me.
Which brings me back to Nick Hines and that seminar in 1999.
When trainer statistics started showing up on the past performances, people thought it was progress. More information. Better decisions. A smarter way to handicap.
And in the right hands, statistics can absolutely be useful.
But information and understanding are two entirely different things.
More information doesn't make you a better handicapper if you don't know how to interpret it. Sometimes, it just gives you more ways to fool yourself.
A five-year statistic can tell you what happened over five years. It can't automatically tell you what's happening today. A trainer's percentage can't tell you everything about the horse standing in the gate. And a bunch of people agreeing with your selection doesn't make it a better bet.
You have to put the pieces together yourself.
You have to look at the horse, the race, the competition, the conditions, and the circumstances. You have to know when a statistic matters and when it's just another shiny object distracting you from the answer.
That's the job.
Not finding the biggest number on the page. Not asking social media for permission to have an opinion. Not waiting for some talking head to tell you what to think.
Think for yourself. Handicap the horse. Trust your process. And have the guts to be wrong without needing a crowd to make you feel better about it.
Nick saw the problem coming back in 1999.
Nearly 26 years later, we've got more statistics, more information, more personalities, more platforms, and more people telling us what to think than ever before.
And somehow, we've managed to convince ourselves that all this extra information means we're getting smarter.
Maybe we are.
But looking around, I ain't exactly overwhelmed by the evidence.
So here's my question: What would happen if we took those trainer percentages off the past performances tomorrow?
Would handicappers become more observant? Would they study the horse more closely? Would they pay more attention to the circumstances instead of reaching for the nearest number?
Or would half the damn crowd sit there staring at the page, wondering how to handicap a race without somebody telling them who wins 25% of the time?
I have a pretty good idea which way that would go.
And if you think I'm wrong, go ahead and prove me wrong.
Just don't expect me to check social media to see if your opinion is popular before I decide whether to believe you.
