Because it doesn't have an off-season, thoroughbred racing provides more wagering opportunities than any sport. In fact, given its global reach, there probably isn't a minute in the day when someone, somewhere isn't placing a bet on a horse.
(Visit
The Greek Sportsbook web site for each day's races, as well as future books on the 2004 Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic).
The game's unlimited access, combined with the reality that thoroughbred racing may be the only sport where a player can turn $10 into $10,000 in a single afternoon of betting, is the good news.
The bad news is that racing's enormous growth also has spawned a new generation of handicapper, tout and commentator who not only offers opinions on the physical abilities of horses but on their mental capabilities, as well.
The other day, one said that a particular trainer was successful with 2-year olds because he got them to "focus."
For all their beauty and grace, is a horse really smart enough to "focus?"
After all, scientists tell us that horses aren't very bright, not as smart as dogs, for example. Horses do not sit, beg, fetch, roll over, give you their paw - er, hoof - or bring in the newspaper on command. They can't even catch a Frisbee. And yet, despite their relative intelligence, dogs still aren't smart enough to race on their own. A mechanical rabbit motivates them.
Well, if a more intellectually gifted mammal such as a canine cannot be relied upon to compete without the aid of a ruse, is a horse really capable of understanding the basic concept of the race, let alone how to "focus?"
Can a horse "battle to the wire" if he doesn't have the brain to understand he's even in a battle or have any comprehension of where or what the wire is?
Would any horse be such a "game competitor" or put in such a "gutsy effort" if he didn't have a whip-wielding human being on his back, urging him forward?
Can a horse that foolishly jumps over a shadow, as Dayjur did famously, 40 yards from the finish, in losing the Breeders' Cup Sprint by a neck to Safely Kept at Belmont Park in 1990, be trained to be "mentally fit" for a race?
"The question of whether horses are intelligent is answered in the affirmative by most horse lovers but is questioned by scientific experts," writes Bernhard Grzimeck, arguably, the world's leading authority on animal behavior and the author of "Grzimeck's Animal Encyclopedia."
Grzimeck conducted experiments on horses and found that two domestic horses seeing each other for the first time approach with upright heads, lowered tail, and with their ears perked forward. They sniff each other on the nostrils, the tail and other body parts. But Grzimeck found horses behave no differently toward dummy horses.
"The stuffed horses was greeted and subsequently responded to in the same way as a live, real horse would be treated," he observed. "The horses always stood right next to the models. Even the most primitively drawn life-size horse pictures were sniffed at the nose and tail. The horses could hardly be separated from the dummies, and stallions attempted to mount them."
Can another horse want to "look another horse in the eye" if he can't discern a real horse from a dummy?
Is an animal that attempts to have sex with an inanimate object smart enough to "always be right there in the big ones?"
And if a particular jockey "gets along well with a horse" can that horse recall that?
"I studied the memory capabilities of horses for particular processes, specifically the disappearance of food, by putting oats in one of four lidded boxes before the eyes of the animal," writes Grzimeck. "The animal was then released from its waiting cage and permitted to go up to the boxes and eat the oats. In these studies, the horse attempted to open the three empty boxes as often as it went to the filled one.
"In contrast, dogs and ravens can find food buried in front of their eyes hours afterward, and wolves can locate food after days."
Can an animal whose memory is so poor that he can't find food when it's hidden in front of him or one who continues to be reluctant to enter a starting gate no matter how many times he's previously done so without incident, really have the mental capacity to "just do enough to win."
Once in the gate, is that horse smart enough to look around, size up the competition and conclude, as many handicappers insist, that he can "win the race on class alone?"
Can a horse have "confidence?"
"One often has a tendency with domestic animals that are closely associated with human to attribute various skills and capacities to these animals that resemble their own, and to equate these behavior patterns with their human counterparts," concludes Grzimeck, who also believes that to anthropomorphize the animal only leads to an incorrect evaluation of its capabilities. "In doing so, we are often doing an injustice to the animal involved, and this is no less true of the horse than of other domestic animals."
So what's the bottom line? If you're betting horse, choose one who runs like Carl Lewis, no one that thinks like Einstein.
