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HANDICAPPING INSIGHTS FEBRUARY 17, 2012 by Dick Powell Wouldn't it be great if you could go to the track each morning and watch all the workouts? It would be a lot of work and you would have to know what you are watching for it to be worthwhile. After many years of doing it, I'm sure you would get good at it. Short of doing it yourself, the next best thing would be to have someone to do it for you. And luckily, thanks to Andy Harrington's "National Turf Clocker Reports" which covers Southern California racing, you have the right guy. Last Saturday at Santa Anita, there was the typical last race with a big field of cheap maiden claimers. I was interested in Joburg Star mostly because he was being ridden by red-hot apprentice rider Eswan Flores. Making his second start off a long layoff, Joburg Star was dismissed at 9-1 odds in the 6 1/2-furlong main track sprint for $20,000 maiden claimers after racing evenly in his first start in 18 months. But what caught the eye was Harrington's workout report. After racing on January 29, his only workout was a half-mile from the gate in :48 flat. However, according to Harrington, he worked in 46 4/5 seconds and was out in 59 2/5 seconds for five furlongs. Quite a difference and Harrington gave it a "B+" rating. You don't see many maiden claimers work that well and only those that purchased Saturday's National Turf Clocker Reports were the beneficiaries of this insider knowledge. In today's world of racing, where horses have more time between starts than ever before, workout information is extremely important and Harrington does a great job giving you not only objective data like accurate times and who was aboard in the work, but his subjective impressions on how well the horse looked and what kind of energy he showed. The situations that I find the workout report to be the most relevant are for first-time starters and layoff horses. Horses that have been racing regularly are not usually asked for much since they are already fit, but I still peruse the entire report since something might jump out or Harrington might have a horse going back in form based on their works. Once you use them and become accustomed to the format, you will quickly note that the actual times of the workouts or how fast they worked compared to the others working that distance have no bearing on what grade Harrington gives the workout. Very often, you will notice a horse that had an average workout but Harrington raves about how they finished up and gives it a high grade. If you are betting any kind of money on Santa Anita, it pays to have Harrington's report in the mix of your handicapping process. *** I'm not saying I liked Hymn Book in last Saturday's Grade 1 Donn Handicap, but one thing that did make sense about his win was how horses that are trained by Shug McGaughey do on wet tracks. For years, the McGaughey trainees would stay on schedule, no matter what, so if a horse was scheduled to train on Thursday and it rained, Shug still worked them. When race time comes and the track is wet, the McGaughey trainee has the experience while many of the others do not. A couple of things stick out regarding this year's Donn. There were nine horses that went off at single-digit odds. You could do a lot of research and not find another Grade 1 stakes race with more than nine. Second, Hymn Book's win certainly flatters the form of To Honor and Serve, who beat him last out in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile. No telling how good he'll be this year. Third, even though Hymn Book is a six-year-old gelding, McGaughey promptly started talking about going to the Grade 2 Oaklawn Park Handicap instead of the Group 1 Dubai World Cup, which has a purse 28 times higher than the race at Oaklawn. And, he's sired by Arch, whose offspring do well on synthetic tracks. *** The world's fastest horse will be in action late Friday night/early Saturday morning. Black Caviar will try to extend her career unbeaten streak to 19 when she races in the Group 1 Lightning Stakes at Flemington Race Course in Melbourne. Post time will be ten minutes after midnight (EST) for the five-furlong sprint down the straightaway. Last week, Black Caviar stretched out to seven furlongs when she won a stakes race beating Southern Speed, who won the Group 1 Caulfield Cup last October and was two for three going seven furlongs. Now, she drops back to five furlongs and she has shown in the past that running down the straight might be her strongest suit. If she gets by the Lightning Stakes, trainer Peter Moody will then try to get her in one more sprint stakes in Australia. Her long-term goal is Royal Ascot, but a stop in Dubai at the end of March is now on the radar screen. Wouldn't that be something -- a day of racing with Black Caviar in one of the sprints and Royal Delta in the World Cup.
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