Horse Racing: Garrity hits up Gulfstream, Oaklawn, Santa Anita

We're going to move around a bit today, as there are good cards across the country: Gulfstream, Oaklawn, and Santa Anita all have decent slates for the earnest handicapper to beat his (or her) head against. As always, our focus here is on winning money, and the key to winning money is picking winners. So let's go.

Gulfstream

We'll start in South Florida, where the 5th race (post time 2:37 Eastern) is a 6 1/2 furlong dirt sprint for three-year-old, Florida-bred, $35,000 maiden claimers. We like 4-Winning Drive, who has many positive traits: he is dropping from Maiden Special to maiden claiming -- the biggest drop in racing -- he is better than his past performances make him look (he did a speed-and-fade last out on a racing surface that was biased against speed), and, most important, he is trained by Jason Servis, who is winning at an absolutely insane 46% clip (22 wins in 48 starts) at the current Gulfstream meet. Add it all up, and he is a strong pick on top at 5/2; we'll bet $20 on him to win. We're also going to play Winning Drive in the daily double: we'll put him with 5-Alpilles, an interesting Wesley Ward turf-to-dirt starter in the 6th, another maiden-claiming dirt sprint. That's a $10 double, 4 with 5.

Oaklawn

The 4th at Oaklawn (post time 3:52 Eastern) is a six-furlong dirt allowance for older Arkansas-breds. We like 7-Hoonani Road. He's been an amazingly consistent runner, and we think he will benefit from a likely speed duel in the race. He should be stalking while the pace-setters wear each other out, and he will be ready to forge to the front when the speedsters give way. We will bet $10 on him to win at 3-1.

Santa Anita

There's more rain in the forecast for Southern California, and we normally make picks for fast tracks. Wet tracks require a level of last-minute flexibility that posting many hours in advance does not permit. When faced with a sloppy card like the one Santa Anita will likely be carding Thursday, we normally pass. But we've doped out the Santa Anita card, and we have two plays we like (Note: that these plays are only for a sloppy track):

The 3rd (post time 4:30 Eastern) is a $12,500 claiming race at a mile on dirt, for older horses. We like 5-Platinum Equity. He won his last race going wire-to-wire, on a speed-favoring, sloppy track, and he would normally be an automatic throw-out for that reason: that's a fluky win, and a fluke, by definition, only happens once. But we think he's going to get a virtually identical setup today: he'll be lone speed in a race with a dearth of other early speed. We'll bet $15 on him to win at 9/5.

The 5th at Santa Anita (post time: 5:30 Eastern) is a $50k maiden claimer for three-year-old fillies at 7 furlongs on dirt. We like 4-Twirling Diamond: She has shown speed in her prior starts, and she has an excellent wet-track pedigree. We think she goes right to the front and stays there, and we'll bet $20 to win on her, and pray that we get her 7/2 morning-line price.

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