I don't personally see any problem with open $7,500 claiming races.

The seven inside-most horses in the race have won 19 races so far this year and it's one of the few races on Keeneland's card today I'm even remotely interested in.

Just so we know what we are dealing with, here is a breakdown of the last race of the day for each day at Belmont since the fall meeting started on September 8th:

There have been 30 last races of the day carded so far, including this weekend, and they have been 1 NY Bred stake, 1 Starter allowance/opt. claimer, 5 Maiden Special Weight (1 open, 4 NY bred), 11 maiden claimers (1 65k, 1 50k, the rest 25k or less) and 12 either conditioned or NW2L claimers, all between 15-25k claiming price. So perhaps it's not every day, but there have certainly been a representative number of low-level claiming races to finish up belmont cards.

Breakdown of field size, of 27 races run so far, 5 had 12 horses, 7 had 11, 5 had 10, 3 had 9, 4 had 8, 3 had 7 or less. It's just you remember the three horse field more vividly so it becomes "all the races have short fields" but the actual number don't back up that assertion.

The races draw full competitive fields and as far as I'm concerned that's all that really matters.

The finale last Saturday at Keeneland was a 30K N2L claimer.

Those two races are very similar -- a good 30K N2L male and a good $7,500 open male are going to be very close on figures -- the only big difference is that the good open $7,500 usually is winning or dropping and the good 30K N2L is consistent at filling out exotic tickets or dropping.

Are you sayin the ENTIRE fall meet at Belmont averaged 8 horses per race?

Did you read the first sentence of his post?

As a stand alone entity Doug, it's fine. To me though, it's a bad end to a high quality sequence. The 3rd just now had 12 horses in a 6f $30k MCLM where there were 2 FTS and 10 that had been out already. That's at least a quality group with some reliable form and a pair upon which to speculate on breeding/workouts. Why not use that as the nightcap? $7,500 claimers -- and mostly from connections less familiar to a wide player audience -- going 9f is a potential staggerfest that involves a lot of guesswork.

I didn't see anything even remotely quality or interesting about that entire group.

Here is the horse who won that race:



She's obviously a vastly inferior horse to any decent $7,500 open claiming male ... they would tear her apart.

She won at 3/1 odds after failing at 2/5 odds at Turfway Park at the same class level last time out. The horses that finished 2nd and 3rd to her are the two first-time starters. Obviously -- they would have been the interesting horses -- merely because the experienced horses were all either bums or hard to trust winning.

That race involves WAY more guesswork than the $7,500 claimer race and that race will take about a 76 Beyer to win -- I think a lot of people prefer routes to sprints...so the "staggerfest" comment doesn't make sense to me.

This is clearly a capping 'comfort zone' or familiarity/preference thing. (And add in the weighing of stand alone v. multi-race.) I would think players have balanced preference on sprints & routes.

Perhaps.

That abortion of a 30K maiden claiming race -- even with a big field -- is the type of race I wouldn't ever touch with a 10-foot pole unless I had some compelling reason to believe one of the first-time starters could run.

I'm not someone who plays many multi-win wagers -- because I often focus on dozens of tracks and races where my stable alert horses are entered back in.

Still, if I was someone who just picked a track and insisted on playing a full card at said track, it's rare that you see a bad open $7,500 claimer anytime the field size is up over 7. To me, that's a class level that generally equals good and interesting horse racing.

I did.

Well who you like in this nightcap? P5 about to commence.. I thought the 7 was the fun price to play with. Then 1-6-2.

I like the 3 and 5 assuming they can avoid pressuring each other. Both figure to be about 8/1 and both will be very tough without pressure.

If the two riders handle it tactically smart -- one of them really should win.

If the pace winds up contested it obviously favors the 1. Hopefully the 5 is loose and the 3 is rating off of him and no one else does anything dumb.

I wasn't saying it there, but I will say it here. Through yesterday, there have been 267 races at Belmont during the fall meet, with a total of 2,213 starters, for an average of 8.288 starters per race. For every 5 horse stakes race or off-the-turf event, there was a big full 12 horse field to make up for it.

:tro:

THX.. I tried to squeeze the 5/6 (coming from that 10f spot at TP) out and thought the 3 assured some pace from all of them.

Nice work! And the weather has wreaked havoc on the turf races. The other day on ATR Andy quoted an incredible number of races that have come off grass during the meet.

Reading never has been your strong suit.

Your right bigmack.

I don't get it.

Better get back to TVG. Wow those pretty horsey people with your ability to copy and paste posts from here and pass them off as your own.

Classic.

stay out of bigmack business before he rips you another one.