Hunting for a Futures Price

Tweet After a scintillating day of upsets, the Derby picture is not as vivid as hoped to be. Only Colonel John won as expected at Santa Anita. Tale of Ekati caught a tiring War Pass (amazing early fractions) in the final furlong in the Wood and Recapturetheglory stole the Illinois Derby at Hawthorne with an impressive win. My attempt in trying to play "beat the favorite" ended up resulting in a classic case of "right club, wrong zip code." And that's why they call it gambling.

Today being the last day for Futures Pool #3 it is time to go hunting for a value bet for a horse whose odds will likely be lower on the tote board on 03MAY. Several horses that had rough outings on Saturday (El Gato Malo, Atoned and Denis of Cork) could be on the outside looking in, based on the latest graded stakes earnings listing for racing through yesterday. One trainer mostly noticeable on the bottom of the list is that of one Todd Pletcher (five horses in last year's Derby), is in jeopardy of not having a horse qualify.

So after some quick analysis, I decided to drop a tenspot on Court Vision (22-1 as of this am). He finished strong from the outside after being five wide and my gut tells me that Gomez is due for a Derby winner. On a hunch, I decided to also drop a fin on Cool Coal Man (21-1), trained by Nick Zito, who will be running at Keeneland next weekend in the Blue Grass. If only I had Biff's sports almanac from Back to the Future II.

Funny tidbit I heard from one of my partners today: The average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon. Kind Of Makes You Proud To Be An American.