The 2020 Breeders Cup at Keeneland was not particularly kind to me. Despite a couple of strong opinions (and short prices) there were a couple races where I was dead wrong.

The walk-the-dog scenario played out for Authentic, and my top pick Improbable ran what I think you could call a “good second” stalking wide and running 67 feet further on Trakus, but didn’t have enough punch in the lane.

I never believed fully in Authentic as a mile-and-a-quarter horse. He proved me wrong twice, but will have a complicated legacy due to the multiple Baffert contaminated food, etc, allegations. The performance on Saturday looked American Pharaoh-like to me, and yet Bob was in the paddock giving a mea culpa to NBC, saying that he had to run a tighter ship. Gamine ran off the screen despite a pair of positives that brings into question whether she should have been in the race at all.

At the same time, having listened to Bob speak at length about training, he’s clearly a sharp guy with great ideas, who’s getting the best of the best horses. Complicated indeed.

Anyway …

I haven’t seen it written, but I’ll say it – it looked to me like Maximum Security was ridden to screw up Tiz The Law’s trip. Max held TTL in, moving in on him several times during the trip, then Max eventually cut in at the top of the stretch. Max flashed briefly at the top of the stretch on the rail before flattening out himself.

I’d accounted for all this on the end of my pick 5 ticket – but the beginning was a mess.

Yaupon looked to break a half step slow and never made the lead when looking like the speed on paper. Formless Whitmore made a bold late run to win well and pay $38, but I needed to be more than four deep to get to him.

The 15 horse, Order of Australia, drew into the Breeders Cup Mile. I’m not sure how many people even knew he made the race until the wire. That would have had to have been an “ALL” for me to get there.

I actually had looked at the “ALL/ALL” scenario to open the pick 5, as Monomoy Girl was a single for me, but it got expensive with the need to use four or five of them to get to Authentic in the final leg. That will be food for thought in future ticket construction. There may have been a better opportunity to get skinny in the final two legs.

The euro presence is one of the biggest conundrums in the Breeders Cup. There’s the “fear the stranger” mentality in ticket construction that requires use of many of them to lock up a leg; meanwhile there are enough clunkers in there to make the ticket in efficient. More food for though for future ticket construction.

The Breeders Cup is joy or pain as a handicapper – connect once on a sequence or triple, and you are in Schaeffer City. Near miss after near miss will have you kicking rocks and questioning your process.

My process proved ok over the weekend – the trip note horses ran back well, and several at prices.

What now ? I’ll take a deep breath along with the rest of the racing world, and I’ve already started analyzing my year to date results.

My play will lessen greatly over the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to the Gulfstream Park championship meet. Having spent a lot of time with Tampa and Gulftstream cards early in the pandemic, I am expecting to have a strong grasp of both loops, and will look to use some of that info as an edge in finding the “now” horses who seem to either pop up in the winter, or perhaps have a special affinity for the “durf” course.

The handicapping sheets I’m working on will take more focus, as we will add more pace angles (here comes the hard math !) as well as some more pedigree angles for two and three year olds. A cleaner finished product is also required, and we’ll try to back test some of the angles, and find a stronger priority order.

The sheets were not a tremendous help for the BC, where virtually every entrant has class and form. It did find Essential Quality pretty well in the juvenile (and the pedigree angle would even more so). It pegged Monomoy Girl, Golden Pal, Gamine on top (huge surprise) and found Highly Motivated, Amy’s Challenge, Nashville, Sleepy Eyes Todd on the undercard. It would have gotten you close to Rocketry and Vequist along with Essential Quality as logical alternatives.

The sheet does little to find European form. For now, that will be the case as the Breeders Cup is a unique day in their rampant participation.