Bomb Squad anatomy

There is a good deal of discussion at TBC about longshots in the Breeders Cup. I thought I'd weigh in here and add an extra few tidbits that I didnt post on the forum. There has to be some benefit to reading this blog, right?

Horses who were 10/1 of more in thier last prep (Arc excluded) are a dismal 116-1-6-6 in the Breeders Cup. So what do the longshots look like?

In the last 10 years there have been 12 BC winners who were successful at 20/1 or more. By just identifying a few common factors about them you can isolate 8 of them. Consider these few factors.

#1 - Starting price must be less than 10/1 in thier last race. This is the converse of the negative angle discussed before.

#2 - Starting price must be less than 10/1 in last G-1 race. If older horses have not run an a G-1 race they get discarded. If juveniles have not run in a G-1 race then you take the most recent race of the highest class level.

#3 - The entrant must have run in the money in thier last start. We dont want bombs who are woefully out of form. Our prime play is an in-form but out of vogue horse.

#4 - The entrant must be in the money in thier last G-1 start. One of the common denominators is that all these longshots aside from the Juveniles had hit the board in thier last G-1 effort. So there was some class there. Just not enough to prevent them from being bombs. Juveniles like in factor #2 default to thier last highest class race.

#5 - The entrant cannot be a maiden. No maiden has won in the Breeders Cup. Its no use betting that they'll start now. There are so many better ways to lose your money.

So take those 5 factors and apply them to every horse in the last 10 years who went off at 20/1 or more on BC day. The cumulative record for those horses is 97-8-4-3. The 8.2% winning percentage is nothing to write home about. But consider that the statistical average for 20/1 shots in all races is 4.76%. That means this is a fairly significant isolation of successful longshots. Not to mention that betting on each one would yeild a $412.10 profit or 212.42%

I do not necessarily advocate playing this blindly but if you are focusing on a longshot in the Breeders Cup you may want to verify that he fits the historical anatomy of a bomb.