Odds and Trends: How is the New Belmont Park Playing?

After years of work, the rebuilt Belmont Park opened for racing Sept. 18. The historic track now features four courses (dirt, inner turf, outer turf, and synthetic) and will serve as the centerpiece of New York racing in the spring, fall, and winter. So far, Belmont has hosted 15 days of racing. What can horseplayers glean from the results? Are any track biases evident? Which jockeys and trainers are the hot names to follow? We're crunching the numbers in this month's Odds and Trends. How are favorites performing? So far, 138 races have been conducted at Belmont Park. We've analyzed the results to calculate the percentage of winning favorites across dirt, both turf courses, and the synthetic track: Overall, favorites have a 29.0% win rate, lower than usual. Favorites have done best on turf, winning at a 36.1% rate, while favorites on dirt have struggled with a low 22.7% win rate. Who are the leading jockeys and trainers? Using StatsMaster (powered by TrackMaster, an Equibase company), we reviewed jockey and trainer performance to identify who is enjoying the most success to start the meet. We analyzed their overall records, as well as their records on dirt, turf, and synthetic to determine which jockeys and trainers are excelling over a particular surface. We've generally listed the top seven in each category, except for trainers on turf (only five trainers have won more than two races on turf) and jockeys on synthetic (only three riders have won more than one race on synthetic). We've also excluded the trainers on the synthetic category entirely because no trainer has won more than one race over the surface. JOCKEYS Overall Dirt Turf Synthetic Two-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey Flavien Prat is off to a hot start at Belmont. He's gone 19-for-74 (26%) overall, and betting all of his mounts would have yielded an almost break-even ROI of -4%. Prat's win rate is even higher on turf (29%), but four-time Eclipse Award-winning rider Javier Castellano has also done well on grass, compiling a 23% win rate. Betting all of Castellano's turf mounts would have produced a +55% ROI. In fact, betting Castellano across the board has been profitable. He's gone 10-for-54 (19%), generating a +27% ROI. TRAINERS Overall Dirt Turf Thanks in part to a large number of starters, five-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown has won more than twice as many races as any other trainer to start the meet, compiling a 25% win rate along the way. He's been especially strong on turf, winning at a 33% rate, and betting all of Brown's grass runners would have yielded a +7% ROI. Many other trainers have generated profitable ROIs thus far, either across the board or on a particular surface. Shug McGaughey has done especially well with an overall win rate of 38% and an ROI of +105%. Linda Rice trainees have been profitable bets on both dirt and turf, generating an overall ROI of +26%. Betting the horse with the highest Equibase late pace rating Using Equibase Race Lens, a powerful handicapping tool for research and analysis, we examined whether Equibase late pace ratings are a valuable handicapping tool at Belmont Park, reasoning that the long straights and sweeping turns at Belmont might make strong finishing speed an asset. Specifically, we reviewed the horse(s) with the highest late pace rating in each race, measuring their results across dirt, turf, and synthetic: Betting the horse with the highest late pace rating in a turf race at Belmont Park is a wise strategy. So far, it's generated a strong 26% win rate and a profitable +10% ROI. Considering only two of the 17 winners started at double-digit odds (the highest at 12.69-1), the ROI can't be attributed to one massive longshot, making this an angle well worth watching to see if it holds up across a larger sample size. Which running styles perform best? Equibase Race Lens sorts horses into five primary running style categories: early, early/presser, presser, sustained/presser, and sustained. There's also the "projected leader" (the horse Race Lens predicts will lead at the first call of a race) and an "unknown" category including horses without an assigned running style (such as first-time starters). Using Race Lens, we studied how these running style groups (excluding the unknown runners) have performed on dirt, over the inner turf course, and on the outer turf course. We didn't analyze the data for the synthetic track since only 11 races have been conducted over the surface: Dirt Inner Turf Outer Turf On dirt, betting projected leaders has been a profitable strategy, generating a 20% win rate and a +7% ROI. Horses assigned the "presser" running style have also done well, compiling a 21% win rate. The inner turf course is a different beast. Here, it's clear you don't want to bet the projected early leader (7% win rate, -86% ROI). The highest win rate comes from horses with the "sustained" running style (16%), and the ROI of these runners is a decent -10%, though a 31-1 winner contributed to the vast majority of the betting returns. The other eight winners in the category all started at 5-2 or less. The outer turf course is producing more or less similar results to the inner course. Projected leaders and horses with the "early" running style yield low ROIs (-39% and -56%), though projected leaders share the highest win rate along with "sustained" runners (15%). Meanwhile, the only profitable ROI comes from horses with the "early/presser" running style. Their win rate is low (7%), but all five winners in the category started at 5-1 or higher (including three at odds between 12-1 and 28-1), generating a +16% ROI. Keep in mind, these win rates and ROIs may swing wildly as more races are conducted and sample sizes grow. How do early leaders perform? As an extension of our running styles analysis, we reviewed the results of all 138 races across the four racing surfaces to gauge how many winners led at the first call: Early leaders performed best on dirt and synthetic, compiling win rates of 28.8% and 27.3%, respectively. Pacesetting winners were less common over the inner turf (22.2%) and outer turf (17.6%). Conclusions Here are a few key takeaways for handicapping races at Belmont Park this fall: The action has been competitive, with favorites compiling a modest 29% win rate. Don't be afraid to back non-favored runners, especially on dirt, where favorites have won at only a 22.7% rate. Javier Castellano and Flavien Prat are hot jockeys worth watching. Betting all of Castellano's mounts has yielded a +27% ROI. Trainers Linda Rice and Shug McGaughey have been strong to start the meet, and betting all their runners has been profitable so far. Betting all turf runners trained by Chad Brown has likewise been profitable. In dirt races, betting the horse Equibase Race Lens projects will be the early leader has generated a +7% ROI. In turf races, betting the horse with the highest Equibase late pace rating has been a powerful angle, yielding a 26% win rate and a +10% ROI. Good luck with your bets! Special thanks to Equibase, which provided me with a free subscription to Race Lens in exchange for product promotion. All opinions remain my own.