It’s opening day at Kentucky Downs, and the pastoral all-turf racing facility has maintained a blockbuster 10-race card, which might be the best ever non-July 4 or December 26 Wednesday card in the history of the North American Turf.
It also marks the debut of the #Jockey7 wager, which challenges bettors to select the best-performing jockey on the final seven races of the day. The jockey wager also inspired the Business Intelligence team to develop a jockey WAR ranking, which helps quantify how much better (or worse) one jockey is from another.
Based on this, Rocco, Hernandez, and Albarado are the three best, but Hernandez especially suffers from scoring opportunities (only 3 mounts and only one of those is an “A”). Albarado and Rocco definitely fit and are must uses on any exotic tickets.
I have Chris Landeros and Feargal Lynch as As, but that might be aggressive, as the field has 19 scoring opportunities, and no other jockey has more than 4. Scoring down to fourth place gives the field a much bigger chance than if either A) wins were weighted more, or B) scoring only went down to 2nd or 3rd place.
Because casual fans prefer to bet names and not numbers, I’m hoping the field drifts up from its fair odds, which I have at even money to win. I’d bet it at 2-to-1 for sure.
My most likely winner of the day is #4 My Impression in race 6. She couldn’t keep up with Lady Eli last out, and there’s no shame in that. Her races against “overnight” types easily best these. 3-to-1 would be an absolute gift.
