Horse Racing: Garrity’s going for three straight at Oaklawn

It’s a Thursday in the land of us railbirds, and that means an expanded slate: The tracks that are dark midweek, like Aqueduct, Oaklawn, and Santa Anita, come back to life, giving the dedicated punter a much wider range of races from which to choose.

We have doped out the cards at these tracks, but our action today is going to be focused on Oaklawn. The forecast in Oaklawn is for morning showers, but the total expected rainfall should be light, and we are expecting a fast track (and Oaklawn, as a true throwback, does not have a turf course).

The 2nd race (2:57 pm Eastern) is a starter allowance for older horses at a mile. There's an entry, and they are stickouts: 1-The Red Dude (post position 3), and 1A-Always Suspect (post position 7) have superior Beyer Speed Figures to the rest of the field, and one of these horses, both trained by Robertino Diodoro, will win (we prefer The Red Dude, but we get both for the price of one). The morning line on them is 9/5, and we will take it, and bet $20 on the entry.

The 3rd race (post time 3:25 Eastern) is a 6-furlong conditioned claiming race, for $10,000 animals who have never run two races. At first glance it’s just another race, another group of slow horses who are hard to separate. But there’s an angle here that we like, and that makes us like one of the runners very much.

Every horse in this race run at this non-winners of two level, most of them multiple times, without winning. What this says to us is that they are not good enough to win here; they’d have to drop to a lower level to be competitive. If all the runners fit this category, then it wouldn't matter, because one of them has to win.

But there is a horse here who has not yet flunked at this level: it's 1-Wild Will. In his last race, this horse broke his maiden in a maiden claimer at Churchill Downs in November, and starts here after a brief freshening. Class is an old and largely discredited handicapping axiom, but it can matter greatly in these lower-level claiming races (in fact, it matters more in a race like this than it does in a Grade I race; but that’s a subject for another time), and we think it matters here: given the choice between horses who have failed at this level, and one who’s trying it for the first time, we’ll take the newcomer. That he’s making a start for a shrewd and competent trainer, Karl Broberg (winning at a smart 28% clip this year), is another hugely positive sign. And even better, we get a solid price on him: He's 5-1. We will take that all day long, and we'll bet $20 to win on 1-Wild Will.

The 4th at Oaklawn (post time 3:52 pm) is a $10,000 maiden claiming race for three-year-olds and up at six furlongs. We like 3-Paxos, a lot: he ships in from Woodbine, where he showed ability on the synthetic racing surface (Tapeta) there. He looks like a traditional dirt horse to us, however, and a series of excellent recent workouts on Oaklawn’s dirt track suggest that as well. We think he wakes up on dirt and runs big today, so we’ll take his 3-1 morning line price, and bet $20 on him to win.

It’s not common that we have three such strong opinions in consecutive races, so we are going to try to leverage them in the multi-race wagers. Oaklawn offers rolling doubles, and a Pick 3 on races 2-4, and we will attack these thusly:

Race 3: $10 double on 1 & 1A (entry) in race 3; and 1-Wild Will, in Race 4.
Race 4 Double: $10 double on 1-Wild Will, in Race 4; and 3-Paxos, in Race 5.
Race 3 Pick 3: $10 pick 3, on 1 & 1A (entry) in race 3; 1-Wild Will, in Race 4; and 3-Paxos, in Race 5.

These tickets will cost a sawbuck apiece, for a total of $30.

That's it for today. Good luck at the windows.