Objects Closer Than They Appear

It’s a big day at Churchill Downs.

A series of stakes races with direct implications for the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland, and for us, the Twin Spires are home turf.

We’ve already gotten off to a good start through the first two days, and there is a comfort level here that you don't get everywhere. The track makes sense to me. The horses make sense to me. Most importantly, I don't see the constant rebreaking form that we saw at Saratoga.

What happened at Toga stays at Toga.

That's my game plan.

Ignore the heavy baggage that Saratoga form is carrying into Churchill Downs or anywhere else for that matter.

I listen, and all I hear is handicapper after handicapper giving Saratoga form the nod of approval. As if anything that happened there automatically deserves a gold star when the horses ship south.

I don't buy it.

I felt Saratoga form was enhanced. And I'm not talking about hay, oats and water.

It didn't look natural to me.

Before somebody says, “Oh, you must have lost your arse off at Toga,” let me stop you right there.

We didn't.

We handicapped for chicanery and had a very good meet.

But I'll tell you something else:

I hate handicapping for cheats.

I want to handicap horses.

I want to watch workouts. I want to watch videos. I want to use forty years of experience and everything my eyes have learned along the way.

That's handicapping to me.

And I'm one hundred times more comfortable looking at a form coming out of Kentucky than I am looking at one coming out of just about anywhere else.

That should tell you something.

There is a lesson here for anyone who handicaps every racetrack the same way.

Numbers.

Numbers.

More numbers.

Then throw in a workout rating with a B-plus beside it and, lord almighty, unleash the pocketbook.

That's not handicapping.

That's outsourcing your opinion.

We've said it over and over and over: your eyes are better than you think.

Use them.

If something looks like a rat, it's probably a rat.

I know I'm going to be wrong sometimes. I'll be wrong about a Saratoga horse carrying good form into Kentucky. That's racing. You aren't supposed to be right all the time.

But I would rather be wrong passing on an underlay than be wrong after swallowing the public's opinion like you're Jonah and the Whale.

That's the difference.

I don't want to chase the crushing support attached to Saratoga form simply because the talking heads have blessed it with Ten Hail Marys.

Listen to them.

Really listen.

You'll hear it.

The playing field is already tilted before the horses ever enter the starting gate.

The talking heads are an extension of how the public thinks.

And the public learned how to think from the talking heads.

So everybody starts handicapping the same way.

If you sound like Andy Serling, you're probably thinking like most New York handicappers. That's not an insult. It's simply the ecosystem.

And I don't want to be part of the ecosystem.

If I like a horse, I like the horse.

If I don't like him, I don't like him.

There is no “but.”

I can't stand the endless qualifying.

“He could go to the lead, but then again, he might not.”

What the hell does that tell me?

Nothing.

That's not an opinion. That's a weather forecast.

I've got an opinion.

And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

I'd rather be wrong with my own eyes than right because somebody else told me what I was supposed to see.

That's why I mute them most of the time.

I don't need the diatribe poisoning my handicapping.

After forty years, I've earned the right to have my own opinion.

And that opinion—good, bad, right or wrong—has brought me everything in my life.

Today we're at Churchill.

Our turf.

Our eyes are open.

And Saratoga?

Leave it at Saratoga, its in the rear view mirror