The Santa Anita Derby

[kahunab]

While I am sure many of you got this one. There are a couple of Leverage Pace points to observe. The 1 horse is clearly a stand out as a key horse. His line scores across the board stand out. Remember our statistic that from Graded Stakes races 72% are in the top 3 EPR and he is #4, his only apparent weakness. But his TPR and LPR are #1 so that kind of neutralizes his one deficiency. The big idea is look at the 3 and the 5. They are 1 and 2 EPR. They are better early that the two E7s .



The segments screen substantiates that the 3 and the 5 are better early that the 2 and 4. Our 1 horse looks to win whether we are early or late. Clear support for his being the Key horse.



The New Pace screen supports our choice of the 1 as Key. His lowest expected SR is 105. The others are in the 90s. Our 3 and 5 don't look so good but the 5 does look like he can be competitive here.



So how do we bet this? We bet the Key, the 1, with 2 or 3 others in a 5 horse field. Based on the power of EPR to give us companion horses we have to include the 3 and the 5. We could include the 2 or the 4 but they are Earlies who can't compete Early. If we play the 1 keyed with the 3,5 for a $4 Exacta and a $4 Trifecta. How did they pay? I suppose you could play it straight for $2 and $2 assuming your confidence in the 1 horse.



Note that the horses did run as we projected. The 4 never competed. The 2 tried but fell apart after the 2nd call. The 1 trailed the field to the 2nd call and closed it down in the stretch. The 5 almost beat him which is why we Key our horse. With a 1 to 1 horse in a 5 horse field we can leverage to a $12.20 Exacta and a $106.90 Trifecta.