I have a confession to make. 
 

In case you don't know it, I have a background in radio broadcasting than spans over 30 years. During that time, I've done everything as an on-air personality from rock to oldies to country to talk radio. Thanks to my fulltime involvement with thoroughbred horse racing, I have become "the local expert" on racing, and have been called on as a guest to talk racing on various programs.

In fact. regional ESPN radio called on me to host the pre-race shows for this year's Triple Crown races, broadcasting live from Omaha's Horsemen's Park, perhaps the finest simulcast facility in the country. Each show was 3 hours long and I was given complete control over content, a surprisingly wonderful accomodation.

I worked pretty hard to fill the time with quality racing information, having guest handicappers like Lauren Stich  and Jay Richards as my on-air guests to talk racing and to focus on the particular race of the Triple Crown that was run on the day each joined me.

On Belmont Stakes Day, one of the segments I aired was about free racing information on the Internet. I did an in-depth look at the Handicapper's Edge, the daily online newsletter compiled by Thoroughbred Sports Network, Inc. and Bloodstock Research Information Services. I praised the "at a glance" feature, which presents a detailed track bias profile for a couple of tracks each week, pointed out how vaulable this feature can be to handicappers, and summarized the current track bias on the air for handicappers who were playing Belmont that day.

The "at a glance" feature categorizes the winning running styles for each distance and surface at a track for the meet to date and for the last week. For example, a look at the current (July 10, 2000) Arlington profile shows that for the meet to date, of 140 6-furlong dirt sprints, 23% were won wire-to-wire. Overall (not counting JUST the displayed wire-to-wire figures), the best running style was early to pressing (E/P). For the last week, of 22 races at the same distance, 18% were won wire-to-wire, with the best running style listed as pressing (P). Don't be confused - the key information here is the running style.

Armed with this information, if you were playing Arlington, unless a horse in a 6f dirt race had a big class advantage, wouldn't you heavily discount the horses who show a solid sustained (well off the pace) running style from win consideration? 

As Commendable rolled to a 1 1/2-length win over Aptitude, not only the favorite, but the horse I gave out on the air as my pick to win, I realized that I had made a huge blunder: I had ignored one of the most important factors in handicapping, track bias. The profile for winners in all route races for the meet to date and the preceeding week was very heavily balanced in favor of early to pressing runners. Closers struggled home. When the track bias stats are very strong in favor of a particular running style, you must put a lot of weight on running style before you proceed with your usual handicapping

While individual variations in track bias can and do occur regularly, proven bias over a period of time becomes a dominant factor. Deep closers, except for those with truly exceptional class, were at a big disadvantage over the Belmont track on June 11, and a presser at 18-1, one of only 3-4 horses with preferred E or E/P running styles, should have been a standout play.

Pat Day said "When we got to the quarter-pole, I  knew we had a pretty good cushion, but I didn't know what the last quarter of a mile had in store for us. But he kept rolling and when I asked him, he just kept going." Guess Pat didn't pay any attention to the stats, either, or he would have known that he had it cinched by then.

Aptitude's trainer, Bobby Frankel, said "I'm very disappointed. He was way too far back. I thought he would be closer. He ran a really great race, but he used himself up getting to the leaders.  He's the kind of horse that you have to get into the race early. He needs to be in the bridle early. "When you come out of there [the gate] and drop the reins, he's going to relax; relax too much. The pace was so slow he couldn't make up the ground once he got running. He came back good, we just have to be a little luckier.  Give Lukas credit. I don't know how he did it."

(Emphasis mine.)

From a trainer's viewpoint, Frankel confirmed what the track bias pointed out before the race.