My Belmont Stakes Experience

The 3rd Leg of the Crown

Last Saturday was my first experience at a horse race. I had watched the bigger races; the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes; on TV over the last few years as I attempted to get into the sport that has captured so many different people. So as I went to Belmont Park with my friend Dillon last Saturday I really did not know what to expect. There was no triple crown at stake so I was not expecting too much excitement. As we walk in we see people to sets of very different people. Some people were tailgating within the park wearing very casual clothes such as shorts and no sleeve shirts as their young kids ran around them. The other set were people dressed just like you would expect at a horse race, full suit and tie, smoking cigars, and on some occasions wearing fedoras. I realized that this experience was a lot more than just the Belmont Stakes. For some people this park consumed their whole day, arriving at eight in the morning when the first race is run, until eight at night when horses of the final race cross the finish line.

What Keeps People Coming Back?

When you watch horse races on television you really do not grasp the concept of people going to see the race in person. As you watch on your couch you see people around the track but until you actually see it in person, you do not understand the point of physically going to the tracks and making the trip for such a short race. However, as soon as I walked into Belmont Park I realized what has kept horse racing alive all these years. 

The betting. 

If betting were not allowed then nobody would show up. It really is remarkable how this draws in so many people and how they keep coming back for more.

As I walked around I began to see that this takes over people’s lives. Yes, there was a track in the center of the park where people would bet on the races as they cheered on their selection, but that did not mean that every person who came in was watching their bet on the track. Walking around I began to see people glued to multiple television sets while they held betting slips in their hands so tight it were as if they would fly away if released. These people were not watching the race they could see in person. They were watching races on other tracks. Races they had bet on across the country. That is what astounded me the most. These people had not come to the track to enjoy Belmont Park like I had, this was a business trip for them. 

Could you imagine going to Madison Square Garden during a basketball game and instead of watching the Knicks you are glued to a television at the bar as you watch another basketball game that you have a bet on? That’s insane. But people still do it. It was not about the experience for them, like it was for him. It was about the money.

The Art of Betting

The art of betting is astounding. The first thing Dillon and I did after we walked in was buy a program so that we knew something about the eight races we were going to watch (we were there for races 4-11 out of a total of 13). We opened the program and were immediately punched in the face by numbers. This looked like something straight out of A Beautiful Mind. Each horse had a stat sheet that would make baseball statisticians cringe. The amount of research and work put into this was astounding. Under each horse there was not only its jockey and odds but also information from the horse’s last races such as starting, middle, and end position as well as what length they won by and what type of track it was. It also had the top three horses in all those races in addition to a whole lot more information that I still do not understand as well as the record of the horse on different types of tracks.

After going through the program we went up to the counter to place our bets on the first race. When asked what type of bet we would like to place we answered that we were not sure. Once again, information blew us back as the woman behind the counter began to explain each type of bet we could place. Dillon and I stood there mouth agape as we tried to take in all she was giving us. Yeah, we could bet on who we thought would win the race, or we could do so much more. Exactas, supers, trifectas (Oh my!) were all types of bets you can place in addition to many others. And once you decide on that you can choose to either box it or key it. Eventually we decided to place an exacta box on each race. An exacta box is where you pick three horses in a race and if two of those three come in first and place in the race you win. In addition to that, before each race we would put a few dollars on who we thought would win.

So we thought we were all set and ready to enjoy some horse racing as we hoped to win some money. But the data did not end at the betting booth. We walked out to the track to wait for our first race and as we look up what do we see? A giant scoreboard with even more information on it specific to the next race to be run. On this scoreboard was each horse’s number that would be racing and next to those numbers were the horse’s odds which were constantly changing due to the numbers underneath. Those numbers, broken into four rows for each horse, were the number of bets placed on that particular horse to finish first, place, show, and come in fourth. But it did not end there. In addition there was a portion that showed you each type of bet and how much a better would win if they bet on a particular horse or set of horses. You would think that all the information available was out there for you to succeed. After all, there was nothing being hidden, all you had to do was interpret what was in front of you. What did gamblers do before computers were able to calculate all of this?

Seven races and about six hours later I learned that I might as well have closed my eyes and picked horses randomly. I had lost every bet except one and even that one exacta box we had won, we still ended up losing money on it as the top two horses odds were not high enough to get us back our money that we spent on that single bet, let alone all we had spent. 

Finally it was the race everyone had been waiting for, the Belmont Stakes. On a gut feeling I decided to bet on Nehro, the second favorite horse with 4-1 odds at the beginning of the day. The horses were finally put in the starting gate and off they went. Hoping to win some of the money back that I had lost in the previous races, I cheered vigorously for Nehro who never seemed to crack the top three. The winner of the race? Ruler On Ice who was a 24-1 underdog with the worst odds in the race. As I watched everyone around me tear up their betting slips and throw them in the air (something that is rather fun when you are not too upset about losing) I realized that you can scrutinize and study until the cows come home but come race time it really is just a crap shoot.

On a side note, going through the program and seeing the names of most of these horses was rather comical. I would like to sit in on the thought process of naming a horse. It sounds like something that could be rather entertaining.