Lauren Nethery: Your Weekly “Why Does My OTTB (insert weird quirk here)?” Q&A

From Lauren:

Your Weekly “Why Does My OTTB (insert weird quirk here)?” Q&A

Jose Ortelli pretending to gallop racehorses in a somewhat unsuccessful fashion.  Silly boy, Thoroughbred fillies are for girls!

I hope this article finds you well, Eventing Nation!  Our winter Eventing season is well under way, Longwood is hopping, Poplar is swinging, and Midnight Rodeo and Hotel Aiken are undoubted dimly lit and densely populated.  This week, I have written a follow-up piece that builds upon the foundation of OTTB stalking that I poured onto your computer screens last week.  Do not despair if you have not received a reply to an OTTB question that you send last week.  I will answer all of those and even more in next week’s column.  But this week, get out a pencil and paper to take notes and I will do my best to detail just how a novice can endeavor to decipher the racing results and accompanying charts of their OTTB’s history.  Enjoy!

Okay, so remember guys, BEFORE YOU EVEN GO TO LOOK AT AN OTTB, you need to have done the following:

  • Ascertained his or her Jockey Club registered name
  • Gone to PEDIGREE QUERY and scrutinized that horse’s breeding.
  • Gone to , accessed, and studied that horse’s profile.

Once the crucial steps listed above have been completed and you are staring at the EQUIBASE profile of your OTTB-to-be, the time has come.  You must click on the Results tab and begin to decipher, to the best of your ability, WHY this horse is no longer suited for the track.  For purposes for this article, we will use the profile of a horse I sold some years ago named BAMCO DYNAMITE.  He represents the quintessential OTTB and his race record is a fairly standard example to analyze.  So let’s start with the basics:

  • By looking at Career Statistics, you can immediately establish that he has raced 18 times, won twice, and has run 3rd once (represented numerically as 18-2-0-1).
  • By clicking on the All Years drop down menu, you can be certain that he raced from 2006 until 2008, which tells you that he raced as a 3, 4, and 5 year old.
  • When clicking the Results tab, you may at first be daunted.  Do not be!  In the most basic terms, it is easy to see that the horse raced at 4 different tracks (Belmont, Finger Lakes, Foxfield, and Great Meadow).  It is important to note that Foxfield and Great Meadow are both steeplechase/hurdle tracks.  It is always a step in the right direction when your prospect already knows how to jump, so this is something to watch out for!
  • As a 3 year old, this horse did not start for the first time until the middle of July but, being a May foal, this is what I would consider to be fairly typical.
  • Things then get a little crazier for Bamco.  After a poor effort in his first race, he was given a short time to learn from that experience and to recover from his effort and then ran back two weeks later.  This is a little bit rushed in my opinion but it does not appear as though he tried particularly hard in his first start and in the racing industry, time is money.
  • Wisely, Bamco’s trainer waited a month to run him back after another poor effort 2nd time out, and this time he improved to fifth.
  • Apparently eager to keep the good mojo going, Bamco ran back just 8 days later for his 4th start and could only get up for 6th, a little bit of a regression from start number three.
  • In start number 5, 18 days after start number 4, not much changes.
  • Finally, in start number 6, 14 days after start number 5, Bamco seems to get things together and gets up for 3rd despite a faster running time in a race of equal class and distance.
  • After almost a month of well-deserved rest, Bamco runs back for a considerably cheaper tag and catches a field that goes a full 2 seconds slower than his last race.  Unsurprisingly, he gets all of his ducks in a row and breaks his maiden on his 7th try.
  • After his maiden win, Bamco’s connections get a little bit cocky and run him back for a claiming tag of twice what he won for last time out and after only 17 days.  Catching a field that finishes a mile and seventy yards 3 seconds faster than his last race, Bamco runs next to last and his trainer throws in the towel for the year and it is likely that, judging but the lay-off of 8 months that follows, an injury occurred after the 11/24/06 race.
  • 2007 kicked off in July once again for Bamco and he proceeded to mimic his form from the year before, throwing a bunch of clunkers before getting his act together towards the end of September and delivering another win in October for the same price that he originally broke his maiden for in a race run just a few hundred meters farther but a almost a second faster than his maiden win.
  • After his 2nd win, Bamco ran a respectable 4th in a similar race that runs almost two seconds faster than his 2nd victory.
  • At the end of 2008, Bamco throws another clunker and begins another long lay-off, this time with a change of connections. A race over hurdles sets the stage for Bamco’s 2008 debut with poor results and a 2ndhurdle race end with Bamco being pulled up prior to the finish of the race and an end to his racing career.

With so much information in such a small space, I will follow this article up with one more piece address the manner in which ‘charts’ are read.  I encourage you to send any further, horse-specific or general-knowledge questions to me via email ([email protected]) for more in-depth and on-point answers, however, and am certainly happy to help you read any charts that you simply cannot translate from racetrack gibberish. Go Eventing and go gallop a former racehorse.

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