Rank Outsider

- Talk about a rank outsider, check out the chart for the 8th at Belmont today (pdf file). Six horse field, five of them ranging from 2-1 to 6-1, and then Heavenly Psalm at 41-1. And guess who won? It’s certainly not unprecedented for the longest shot on the board to win a race, but it’s pretty rare that this distinct of a longest shot on the board pulls the upset. Heavenly Psalm had actually graduated at 6f on the inner track just three races back. But she was beaten soundly in her first two allowance tries, and faded to 15 lengths behind in her last, at today’s mile distance.

But today, she set the pace while “in hand,” going 45.81 to the half (with a 22.66 second half); put away the hot tote horse Generosity at the top of the stretch, and then staggered home in a full 27.05 seconds! Talk about ‘bottoming out the field.’

I mentioned Generosity this morning; she was 6-1 morning line, opened around 9-2, drifted slowly down to 7-2 with around three minutes to go. From there she got pounded to 5-2 at post time. That late tote action is something we don’t get in the past performances or race charts. When Sports Eye carried thoroughbred pp’s back in the.....a long time ago, they did have the odds with three minutes to go, so you got a sense of the late action.

Speaking of the tote board, we never discussed the odds for the Preakness because it seemed trite at the time, but with Barbaro having a Wednesday termed to be "excellent," let’s take a look back. There were some pretty unexpected things going on.

For one thing, Sweetnorthernsaint was stone cold dead on the board at 8.40 to 1, after getting hammered to favoritism in the Derby and the Illinois Derby. Unbelievable. I don’t think he deviated from 8-1 the entire time. Of course, he ran far better than he did in the Derby, and is considered a possibility for the Preakness Belmont.

But the most amazing thing about the betting was the fact that Platinum Couple wasn’t the longest shot on the board, and was only 33-1! How could he have been lower than Greeley’s Legacy, the longest shot at 34-1? Diabolical was only 26-1. I think we’ve been seeing this type of board in the Triple Crown races ever since Giacomo, as people are drawn to the highest prices.

I think we this saw this effect in the betting for the Derby as well. If Giacomo was 50-1, horses like Seaside Retreat and Storm Treasure should have been 5,000 to 1! Yet only one horse in the field, Deputy Glitters, was as high as 60-1. We also saw this in last year’s Belmont, in which no horse, even one that was a maiden, was higher than 20-1. (The maiden finished third, thereby costing me the triple.)