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SUCKER BETS---(part 20) 30---PLAYING HORSES WITH NEGATIVE EQUIPMENT Do you pay strict attention to a horse’s equipment? Do you notice changes in a horse’s equipment? Do you know what negative equipment produces losses over 90% of the time without regard to any other handicapping factor? Unless you answered “yes” to all three of those questions, you’re making “sucker bets” on a regular basis and you don’t even know it. A negative equipment change most often translates to a loss unless a horse is “plunging” in class while meeting horses that are even more problematic. We’ll discuss the most obvious “no-nos” directly below, but in no particular order or hierarchy because they are all “sucker bets”. Perhaps the negative equipment change that many a good “paper” handicapper misses is the addition of a martingale. A “martingale” is an extremely negative piece of equipment. Typically, it is used to stop a horse from carrying his head too high, or from continually throwing it about, or to keep the saddlefrom slipping. There are a couple of varieties, but the one that concerns the handicapper is the martingale with a breastplate. This leather strap passes around the breast and back across the shoulders, fastening to the saddle cinch about level with the rider’s knees. It’s sole purpose is tokeep the saddle from slipping backwards on horses that are abnormally skinny, or those runners with “flat ribs” (a conformation defect). The lastthing any jockey needs to worry about is his saddle slipping as he goes to the whip turning for home. If you watch closely, it is not at all uncommon to see a “martingaled” horse very weakly ridden thruout their entire race, especially in the drive to the wire. They very rarely win races unless running against the absolute bottom rungs of the claiming ranks. My suggestion to you is to throw them out with utmostconfidence! If you are on track or if you watch a post parade via a satellite monitor when off track, martingales are very easy to spot. If you’re not on track or able to watch a post parade, you could be making a “sucker bet” with the lack of this essential information. Keep your eyes open and save yourself a bad bet! A “run-out bit” (aka bear-out bit, leverage bit) is a very negative running bit used with problematic horses that can’t or won’t run straight for any number of reasons. The bit itself is extended out on either and/or both sides of the mouth. These extended bits can protrude as far as 4 inches and allegedly offer additional leverage. They are employed with the hope that any increased jockey leverage will help to prevent a horse from either “getting out” on a turn, or from “lugging in or out” . These bits very rarely help. Horses “get out” on a turn because they are moving too fast to properly negotiate the surface, or more likely because they are sore or problematic in some other way. Once in a while their natural conformation could be inherently defective and the cause. But whatever the reason, they have a very difficult time “grabbing” the track on turns. While a run-out bit certainly can’t hurt the horse, it is merely a “stab” in the dark at correcting a problem that is sometimes uncorrectable. Conformation “faults” are never rectified by running bit changes. If the run-out bit is used to attempt to prevent lugging in or out, its actual benefit (if any) comes into play as the horse starts to tire. As he begins to slow down after an all-out effort, his natural tendency might be to either lug in or to lug out. This frequently causes fouls and takedowns if the horse in question hits the board. The “theory” that the run-out bit’s increased leverage will somehow get the horse to run in a perfectly straight line or at least in a straighter line, is more fiction that actual fact. If a horse is really that tired or that sore, NO running bit on earth will keep him running in a perfectly straight line. By now you’re surely aware that horses racing with these negative running bits are no-nos! Very, very, very few ever win races, unless of course, they are running against even more problematic horses on the bottom. Stay off them----they’re sucker bets! PART 21----MORE “SUCKER” BETS(more negative equipment)
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