Sea the Back of Racing

DiscreetPicks sent along an excerpt from a story about some proposition bets being offered in the UK.

Paddy Power, who are refunding all losing ante-post bets placed on Sea The Stars for the Classic, offer an interesting market.

The Irish layers are also offering odds of 25/1 that Sea The Stars produces a Derby winner from his first crop of foals.

Paddy Power said, "It's sad to see the back of him but he has nothing more to prove. Let's just hope he's more Sadlers Wells than Cigar or Gorgeous George (Washington)!"

William Hill take a slightly different line and offer 12/1 that any of his first crop wins any of the British classics.

They are also betting on what the initial stud fee will be for Sea The Stars.

Between 90,000 and 110,000 euros is the 6/4 favourite, over 110,000 is on offer at 7/4, while less than 90,000 is available at 2/1. [bettingzone]

First of all, maybe that's a custom in the UK, but seems quite nice of them to refund all that money. Did Steve Wynn do that? Secondly: "It's sad to see the back of him." lol, I love the way they put things over there.

But thirdly and most of all....25-1 on Sea the Stars siring the winner of the 2014 Epsom Derby? Do you think that would perhaps be fair odds for one of his progeny to start in the race? Of course, he does have every right to be a prodigious stallion, given his freakish talent and his blue blood - a son of Cape Cross, a sire of 57 stakes winners in his seven crops, including Ouija Board, out of Urban Sea, the dam of seven stakes winners, including champion (racehorse and sire) Galileo and local star My Typhoon. And he'll surely have a healthy size crop, even if the over 110,000 on his stud fee pays off at 7-4. Still, doesn't seem like fair odds to me.

DiscreetPicks adds:

I can't tell you how cool it is that the Europeans are taking bets on Sea The Stars' breeding exploits. Those people love to gamble, and they give horseracing the respect it deserves. The chances of anything like that being offered in Vegas is 0%.

If it's 0% in Vegas, you can imagine what it would be in the rest of the country. Given the stubborn resistance that has met the expansion of gambling every step of the way even to the still relatively small (at least compared to the UK) amount of legal gambling we have nationally, it's hard to imagine any bookie joints opening up in Manhattan (or anywhere else) anytime soon. Too bad; not only could we really bet on who gets the Aqueduct racino (or on the Monserrate verdict), we could get down on whether Paterson scratches his crotch during the press conference (or whether Monserrate gets kicked out of the Senate should he be convicted of a lesser charge).

And it's true, it's a different culture when it comes to gambling over there; and it almost makes comparisons of the (lack of) popularity of the sport here to what it is over there meaningless. Surely, things would be drastically different for the sport if gambling was part of the popular culture here. I've always maintained in this space that it's the gambling angle which is the sport's only hope of regaining popularity, and I think we'd see that borne out if attitudes about gambling were different, and if creative propositions were well-marketed and readily available. I also believe that the attempts these last two years to market the sport by promoting Curlin and Rachel Alexandra prove what a total waste of time and effort that approach is. Horses in the 21st century simply don't race nearly enough; and we see the back of them far too soon to make anyone care. The sad truth is that nobody does. And it certainly doesn't help when you have egotistical owners more interested in making a buck or proving a point than being a sportsman; or a network partner which quite obviously considers its contractual obligations to be more of a nuisance than an endeavor it takes pride in.