TRAINERS - JOCKEYS - PEDIGREE

Whenever an effective trainer switches to a leading rider, stable rider, or hot apprentice, handicappers can assume the intentions are positive, notably if the rider change is accompanied by a class maneuver, a change of distance, a new footing, or an equipment change.

A leading rider means a jockey currently winning with approximately 20 percent of his mounts.

The class drop-jockey switch maneuver has long qualified as a twin-pack of positive trainer intentions. Statistics have indicated the maneuver produces profits, provided the new jockey has been scoring at a 20 percent rate. The 15 percent winner is not nearly as successful, regardless of reputation.

Practically all experienced handicappers appreciate the general situation whereby competent trainers can be expected to defeat incompetent trainers, assuming the horses are comparable, or perhaps the more accomplished trainer's horse is merely slightly inferior.

Is the trainer competent? That is always the first question. The answer is a dichotomous decision: yes or no. If a trainer is judged competent, the horse is acceptable on the trainer factor.

A competent trainer wins approximately 11 percent of his starts, which is roughly equivalent to his percentage of the starters in the races he enters. Normal fluctuations around the baseline during a shorter time interval, as of a race meeting, can be higher or lower by 50 percent. But at year's end the competent trainer's win percentage settles at upward of 11 percent.

If a leading trainer wins approximately 20 percent of the time, an incompetent trainer wins approximately 5 percent. Those are useful benchmarks. A 5 percent trainer can be dismissed, unless the horse figures solidly and the odds will be greater than 10-1.

As a rule, leading trainers--the 20 percent club--can be supported whenever they present handicappers with a contender at attractive odds, and incompetent trainers cannot be backed whenever they present handicappers with a contender at low odds. The former is an overlay, the latter an underlay.

Beyond general competence, recreational handicappers can limit their preoccupation with trainers to a few situations where trainer performance, or trainer intentions, really count.

A trio of questions can be posed as part of the handicapping routine:

2. Is today's trainer especially hot or cold?
A hot trainer has been winning regularly at approximately twice the rate as normally. A cold trainer has been winning with no horses, or just a few, across several weeks of steady racing. The losing run, in particular, can persist for months, even among genuinely competent horsemen. Abandon them, until they rebound.

3. Is this particular horse in this specific race part of a successful trainer pattern?
Again, a number of peculiar factors will suddenly be arrayed in a discernible pattern the handicapper intuits as vaguely familiar and previously successful. The odds will be generous, not miserly.

Regarding strengths, weaknesses, and successful patterns, certain familiar situations lend themselves to manipulation and exploitation by a trainer's peculiar expertise. Give greater emphasis to well-documented trainer performance:

Now common at major tracks, and at many minor tracks, most handicapping-information suppliers emphasize detailed information about trainer performance and trainer patterns. Annual surveys of performance supersede compilations for a race meeting only. Three-year baselines are probably optimal.

While the trainer deserves a reasonable emphasis in the recreational handicapper's regimen, the jockey does not. No blunder has burdened the casual racegoer's day at the races as the over-betting of jockeys. The inclination is virtually universal, and almost as universally unproductive.

If a trainer switches from a minor rider, or journeyman, to a leader, handicappers can mark the occasion (+). The interpretation of the change, as mentioned above, depends upon other, broader contexts. Jockey changes will be understood best in a context that underscores trainer intentions.

The bottom line on jockeys is painstakingly plain. No one can bet consistently on jockeys and hope to prosper at the races.

The following advice on jockeys can be accepted as gospel among recreational handicappers:

1. Jockeys are relatively unimportant as handicapping factors.
2. Never bet on the jockey factor alone.
3. Leading jockeys, and hot apprentices, are notoriously overbet. Avoid their mounts as underlays.
4. Over-weights among jockeys are meaningless.
5. Hot and cold jockeys are not nearly as instrumental to handicappers as their counterpart hot-and-cold trainers.
6. Apprentices can win routes as frequently as they win sprints, but the large majority of apprentices do not win as frequently on the turf or in stakes.
7. Riding specialties, that is, Chris McCarron on the turf, Laffit Pincay out of the gate, Eddie Delahoussaye on deep closers, Jerry Bailey in stakes races, sometimes can be meaningful, but the full context counts most, and the most successful patterns tend to be overbet.

As with leading trainers it's convenient to know when leading riders are off their game. When top riders have been losing abnormally, their favorites and low-priced contenders in contentious and unpredictable races can be forsaken.

PEDIGREE EVALUATION
EVALUATING SIRES
Information about horses' pedigrees becomes useful to handicappers in three situations where conventional methods often disappoint:

In each situation handicappers want to know which sires can be expected to perform successfully about twice as frequently as probabilities would expect. A statistical study of a sire's progeny's win percentages in the situations sometimes clears the air.

Dams pass on racing aptitude equally well as sires, to be sure, but the small number of their sons and daughters prohibits effective statistical evaluation.

A critical mistake is repeated dally by recreational handicappers. Because a horse performed well on grass, or in mud, does not mean its sons and daughters will, too, and the majority do not.

Prepotency is a condition whereby a sire transfers its racing aptitudes to progeny unusually well, in comparison at least with sires that are not prepotent. The most productive grass sire of the past two generations, Stage Door Johnny, never raced on the turf. Not many sires achieve prepotency, though thousands persist in trying. When evaluating pedigree, it's crucial to distinguish the sires that have passed along their aptitudes from those that have not.