By Noel Michaels (Originally published by Nassau (N.Y.) OTB.)
The weather outside may be frightful for many of us around the country at this time of year, but one of the best exceptions to that rule is usually in South Florida where the weather is warm and sunny, the grass is green, and the winter racing is as good as it’s going to be all year long. And so, no matter how cold it is in your neck of the woods, there’s no excuse for horseplayers not to get themselves out to the track or favorite OTB, or, even better, no excuse not to log on online with your favorite account wagering provider and break the locks off your wallet so you can let it rip at Gulfstream Park. The meet is always very challenging for handicappers, but the winter racing at Gulfstream still features the best trainers and jockeys, and many of the season’s best stakes runners and stakes races.
The annual winter Gulfstream Park meet opened January 3 and will extend for four months until late April. Northern grass courses are frozen, but Gulfstream’s turf course is fresh and will be in full use all winter, offering one of the best turf racing programs of any track running at any time of the year. In addition to the top winter turf racing in the East, Gulfstream also offers the region’s top winter stakes program including a 3-year-old series designed to offer horses the best possible stepping stones to the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown.
The Gulfstream meet begins with horses shipping to Florida from all over the East and Midwest to join the cream of the local crop who have been competing at Calder all year, including the November and December Tropical at Calder meet. Generally speaking, the shippers from places like Kentucky and New York have a class edge on the local horses, but that is not always automatically the case anymore with competitive horses at nearly all levels being sent out by several local trainers, especially early in the meet when many of the snowbirds are coming off layoffs and are still getting acclimated.
The middle part of the Gulfstream Park meet is when the action really starts to happen. Late January ushers in the time when the out-of-town barns really come to life as the quality of racing elevates to its highest level of the year in South Florida. This is usually from the second half of January until the end of March. The Sunshine Millions, the annual high-stakes battle between Florida- and California-breds, co-hosted by Gulfstream and Santa Anita, will be held this year on Saturday, January 30. This year’s six Sunshine Millions events, including three at Gulfstream, are followed in early February by the Donn Handicap, which is annually the centerpiece of the Gulfstream meet’s dirt handicap schedule for the best older horses in the East competing at this time of the year. Donn runners often are prepping for the $6 million Dubai World Cup in late March.
When mid-February rolls around, the focus at Gulfstream Park begins to turn to the 3-year-olds, with February’s prime Kentucky Derby prep races, the Fountain of Youth and the Hutcheson, leading up to March’s Florida Derby and then onward to other prep races around the country and eventually to the Triple Crown. In the decade of the 2000s, three Florida Derby winners went on to win the Kentucky Derby including 2001 winner Monarchos, 2006 winner Barbaro, and 2008 champion Big Brown.
With most of the best East and Midwest trainers and horses wintering in Florida, it’s no surprise that the top jockeys will all be there, too. A strong case can be made that during the past decade, the Gulfstream Park jockey colony has become the best jockey colony in the country during the winter, and arguably the best anywhere at anytime of the year along with Saratoga’s summer meet. Gulfstream is the winter home of John Velazquez, Cornelio Velasquez, Edgar Prado, Kent Desormeaux, Julien Leparoux, Javier Castellano, 2009 Gulfstream riding leader Jose Lezcano, and many more solid jockeys all vying to win races including new or returning riders like Rajiv Maragh, Jeremy Rose, and others like Jesus Castanon
Any meet, no matter how good or bad it is, is always a lot better from a horseplayer’s point of view when you are winning races and cashing tickets, and the best way to accomplish that task is to pay attention to trainer trends, jockey/trainer combinations, and certain other meet-specific handicapping tips that have proven themselves to be profitable over the recent past since Gulfstream Park’s main track was reconfigured to a mile-and-an-eighth oval prior to the 2005 meet.
For handicappers to establish a winning edge at Gulfstream Park, they should pay attention to statistically-driven tips focused in the areas of running styles, shippers and layoffs, post positions, and turf racing, which are all designed to give handicappers their best chance to win at the Gulfstream meet from start to finish. Important information in each of these areas is a key to having a productive and successful winter meet all winter at Gulfstream Park.
Speed and especially tactical speed are two very important keys to success on the Gulfstream main track. Never before was this statement true more than at the 2009 meet, when tactical speed was perhaps the No. 1 key factor to winning on the dirt.
Since deep closers generally don’t do well on this main track, and inside posts and rail-skimming trips are usually not an advantage, the two prevailing track biases on Gulfstream Park’s main track are, 1) Gulfstream favors horses with speed and tactical speed, and; 2) Gulfstream one-turn dirt races favor outside paths, while Gulfstream two-turn races favor inside posts – except for, perhaps, the rail. When you are stuck between two or more contenders in a race and can’t make up your mind based on any other information, let these two rules be your guide to making your final decision and you probably will seldom go wrong.
When it comes to layoffs, take into consideration the length of the layoff and let the odds be your guide. Layoff horses from up north take a lot of money at the mutuel windows despite the fact that they might be at a disadvantage on the dirt for the first month of the Gulfstream meet against the acclimated and in-form local horses.
Layoffs as denoted in the Daily Racing Form and other pp sources are always considered to be six weeks, but at this time of the year, even more than in other situations at other times of the year, a real layoff really can’t be considered to be six weeks. Breaks between races any shorter than 2 ½ months often don’t count for much at this meet, whether in the higher quality dirt races or in turf races in particular. Using six weeks as the cutoff point for layoffs is just an arbitrary number, but actually layoffs in terms of your own handicapping should be considered to be any period of time that you see fit to use.
Horses with a class edge can overcome the shorter layoffs up to about 2 ½-months with relative ease, especially from trainers you trust such as Todd Pletcher, Bill Mott, and Christophe Clement. Horses with the longer layoffs might concede an early advantage to the locally-based horses and others who are in form this time of year.
Beyond that, always remember to watch the tote board. The Pletcher-, Mott-, and Clement-type horses will always be well bet, are there’s rarely anything you can do about it. However, when field sizes balloon upward to 10-12 horses at the height of the Gulfstream meet, the odds offered even on guys like Pletcher, Mott, and Clement can still be highly bettable, and that’s not-to-mention the exactas and trifectas in those races, which always manage to pay a premium because the chalk is often in the neighborhood of 3-1.
Some of the prime golden rules at Gulfstream Park are to stay away from outside posts in main track routes, and to stay away from far inside posts in dirt miles. Don’t bet the rail horse in any sprint at 6 1/2 furlongs or longer, and stack your bets against front-runners on the turf. These axioms cannot be repeated often enough, because these elements when added together with winning running styles, winning jockey/trainer combinations, and winning trainer trends will provide you with the framework of everything you’ll need to make money at the Gulfstream Park meet.
The rail post is, at times, absolutely awful at Gulfstream Park in one-turn races between 6 1/2 furlongs and a mile on the main track (Post 1 at 6 1/2 furlongs during the 2009 meet won 2-of-49 races for 4%). Often, the anti-rail disadvantage is enough that any reasonable player would be forced to think twice before betting a horse from the wood no matter how good the horse looks on paper.
In Gulfstream miles, the three inside posts are also much more of a disadvantage than an advantage. Note, however, that the far outside posts in those races aren’t great either. Mid-pack posts from 4-7 seem to be the best gate slots at one mile.
Now let’s move to the grass, where a large part of the action takes place each winter at Gulfstream. Like many turf courses, the Gulfstream turf usually favors horses with good turn-of-foot acceleration in the stretch. It is difficult to go wire-to-wire on the Gulfstream turf course, and Gulfstream’s turf course is definitely not friendly at all to early speed horses. Through the last couple years it has became one of the most difficult courses in the country on which to go wire-to-wire on the grass.
Interestingly, outside post positions have not been as much of a detriment for horses on the turf as they’ve been on the dirt. This is opposite to the way most tracks play where inside draws are key factors in turf routes. More often than not at Gulfstream, running style – not post draw – has been a key determining factor how well a horse is expected to run on the Gulfstream lawn.
If you must bet a Gulfstream turf front-runner, try to make sure 1) The horse is the lone speed in the race, preferably from an inside post, 2) The horse has a solid class edge on the rest of the field, and 3) Look and see if the turf rails are moved out from the hedge.
After you learn the trends that have played such a big part of the results at Gulfstream in recent years, you are ready to move on and apply them into your own handicapping. When your own top handicapping methods are sharpened within the framework of Gulfstream’s common post position and running-style biases, you have the makings for a winning meet.
Gulfstream is just getting started and a great meet is once again ahead of us. Enjoy the ride.
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Noel Michaels has been involved in virtually every aspect of Thoroughbred racing throughout the last two decades. Noel is most widely known as the racing media’s most prominent authority in the field of handicapping contests and tournaments. He was the youngest full time handicapper ever hired at the Daily Racing Form in 1993 and went on to enjoy a 12-year association with “America’s Turf Authority”. He is currently the house handicapper and director of player development for Nassau County Off-Track Betting in New York.
