Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/89420
[ Circuit ] Pony Excess S end $100 to some guy I don't know, the email instructed, and, if all went well, in seven weeks I could get back a few thousand bucks. Te directions told me to route my funds to a guy named Huddie in New Jersey, rather than Princess Vivian Onyekwere of Nigeria. So I was confident the email's premise, an invitation to enter Dave Hudson's Saratoga Race Course handicapping pool forwarded Illustration by Matt Mignanelli By Zach Everson betting on a Derby prep, covering up Twin- Spires.com with a Word document whenever my wife approached. Te more appropriate use of my time, I was later informed, would have been helping my heavily in-foal wife parent our two-year-old. And while my state- ment wasn't technically false — I could, at some point, write about that second heat of the Southwest Stakes (oh, look, I just did; booyah!) — she deemed my winning $22.90 www.haasjewelers.com to me by an associate I'd met covering Der- by, was legit. Of course, had I known when signing up that by the time Hudson was 25 he'd already worked on Saratoga's backside for a decade, I would've realized I was com- peting above my class level. But that's the info a lazy gambler but somewhat diligent writer only finds out later. Each Friday through Sunday of the meet, www.yewdellgardens.org [16] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.12 July 20 to Sept. 3, the 129 competitors in the sixth annual running of the Huddie would place a hypothetical win/place/show bet on a pony in any six races they chose. Te top five money-earners would then divide the pot with the entrants who made the most win- ning individual bets and the entrant(s) who picked the highest-paying single winner. For 2012, first would pay out $6,707.80 — or exactly $7,294.39 more than I'd won on the horses this year. When Louisville Magazine's editor sug- gested I write about entering this handicap- ping contest, which was my first, playing the ponies became work. Tat was a good thing. On a Monday afternoon in February, I claimed to be working when I was in fact on a 50-cent trifecta partial wheel both irrel- evant to the argument and offensive. I decided to become the Sage of Saratoga. I bookmarked racing websites, subscribed to e-newsletters and followed turf writers and fellow Huddie participants on Twitter (#hud- die). Not only would I know if Todd Pletcher trimmed or simply pushed back his cuticles in the break between morning workouts and afternoon races, but I'd also know how his horses fared historically when he made either move. Te ease of uncovering insight on the personal grooming habits of Saratoga's win- ningest trainer in 2010 and '11 notwith- standing, handicapping some 30 races and 300 horses a weekend began to intimidate me. But the synthesis of my literature review yielded an angle: Pick closers on the inner turf who are starting toward the outside and have a morning line of 4-1 or greater. And for the seven weeks of the Huddie, that's largely how I made my 44 picks. In the meet's first race, one mile on the inner turf, I went with Nine O Wonderful. It won, pay- ing $48.30, and I was instantly in first place,