If you were able to attend the races on Friday and Saturday, you saw a series of front running winners over a fast track which is not unusual early in the meet. After the storms moved through on Saturday night, the track played a bit more evenly on Sunday as off-the-pace runners held their own.
Opening night produced a wide variance in Pick 4 payoffs, as the early Pick 4 returned a chalky $37.55 for 50-cents and the late Pick 4 was a pool sweeping $8,237.90 for 50-cents. Thanks to the reduced takeout on the Pick 4 this year, that lucky winner received an additional $862.10 over what it would have paid last year! More good news for Pick 4 players: all six Pick 4 payoffs were overlays compared to the win parlays of the sequence. The overlays ranged from 9% to 93% above the win parlays. Keep playing that Pick 4 at Canterbury Park!
Jockeys Juan Rivera (Rivera aboard Bet Your Boots in the 10,000 Lakes Stakes above) and Dean Butler led all riders with 4 winners. Trainer Tony Rengstorf saddled three winners to get off to a nice start.
I talked about Post 1 in my Canterbury preview last week. The rail post got off to a bit of a slow start the first weekend with only three winners, but they were all good prices and produced a break even ROI for the three days.
Here’s another angle that might be worth following, and a few facts and figures from opening weekend…
The Beaten Favorite Angle
This is an angle that involves wagering on any runner who was a beaten favorite in their last start. There were 14 such runners over the weekend at Canterbury and seven of them were victorious. That’s a 50% strike rate and the angle returned $2.29 for every dollar wagered.
Winners Previous Start
Horses shipped to Canterbury Park from across the country. Here’s a breakdown of the major tracks horses shipped from, and how they fared on opening weekend:
Prairie Meadows: 5 winners from 28 starters. ROI 0.89
Hawthorne: 3 winners from 15 starters. ROI 0.55
Canterbury (2011 meet) : 3 winners from 51 starters. ROI 0.63
Oaklawn Park: 2 winners from 11 starters. ROI 1.96
Turf Paradise: 2 winners from 19 starters. ROI 0.26
Fonner Park: 2 winners from 21 starters. ROI 0.86
Slow Starting Stats
First time starters went 0 for 13 on opening weekend. Related to that, horses running on Lasix for the first time went 0 for 15. And horses with Morning Line odds of 10-1 and higher were only 1 for 50 during the first three days. Things to keep in mind…
This blog was written by Canterbury Regular “The Oracle”. The Oracle is a longtime Minnesota race fan that has handicapped Canterbury’s races religiously for more than 20 years. He writes about handicapping and statistical trends in Canterbury’s races.
Photo Credit: Coady Photography
