Weekend Winners Club

Well, let’s start with the Preakness Stakes itself. The Grid crushed it this year, with the top ranked Power and Speed horse Shackleford winning at 13-1, despite a 4th place finish in the Kentucky Derby. See Grid here:

Full Preakness Grid Here.

As all regular handicappers know, the Preakness does tend to favor speed more so than any other Triple Crown race, so the only surprise was that Shackleford didn’t bounce off the two best performances of his life.

Next was Animal Kingdom, the Kentucky Derby champion, coming off not only his highest performance figure, but the best PF of any of the Preakness contenders.

Now, the 3rd place horse is always hard to predict and usually a non-Derby horse, in this case Astrology, who had the 4th best Early Pace number, and who was all the TV handicappers’ wise-guy horse.

In 4th was Dialed In, undisputed top late running horse in the field. Also, he ranked 1st in Stamina and 5th in Power. The only surprise is that they didn’t run him close enough to the pace, not learning from the Derby debacle of holding him in last until it was too late. Magna Entertainment had to be happy they didn’t have to fork out $5.5 Million if he had won.

Wrapping up the Super Hi 5 was Dance City, another newcomer who had 2nd EP and 4th in Speed, and came as no surprise to some of us.

In short, the Preakness Grid could have been used for major profits on the Preakness bet itself. Always bet on the top power horse, especially at odds of 10-1 or greater.

The rest of the undercard kind of sucked for gambling, with favorites winning all 4 of the graded stakes prior to the Preakness.

Before that, Chinglish won the Murphy at 8-1. The Grid rated him at 2nd in LP 4th in Stamina, which on Pimlico turf is a good thing.

Race 5: a first time on turf starter won with 5th best Stamina at 5-1.

In the Dupont Distaff, another horse tied for 2nd in LP won at 11-1 in a return to dirt for Pletcher. This was for me a quite obvious pick.

Other than that, it was pretty much all favorites with no good way to capitalize on it except for a well placed trifecta or superfecta.

Altogether though, with the Grid providing a few good long shots on the board, which is of course what its purpose is, anyone could have made some good money with some well placed bets.

The Grid can’t do anything about favorites winning. Favorites just do that, especially at Pimlico, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Belmont Grids will be available starting Wednesday June 8 click here for options.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS