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BREEDERS' CUP ADVANCE EDITION
GOES ON SALE TODAY

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Where Escape Clause will make her next public appearance

You have five days to email your guess on Escape Clause’s selling price in the Fasig-Tipton “night of the stars” auction in Lexington, KY on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

Email your guess in the subject line and send to theinsider@ASDowns.com by midnight this Sunday. The entrant who is closest to the highest bid on Manitoba’s super mare will win $25 in wagering vouchers, $25 in ASD merchandise and bragging rights forever.

Escape Clause is Hip 114 in a 201-horse auction, with the filly, Midnight Bisou, likely attracting bids in the millions of dollars Escape Clause lost by a mere nose to Midnight Bisou in the Apple Blossom Stakes at Oaklawn Park in April.

Unbeaten filly "110% ready" for Saturday stakes
Short field expected in $50,000 CTHS Sales Stake at Century Downs

Hidden Grace with trainer Mike Nault (James Carey Lauder photo)

Manitoba’s unbeaten filly, Hidden Grace, is ready for a big effort in this Saturday’s $50,000 CTHS Sales Stakes for 3- and 4-year-old Canadian-bred fillies at Century Downs, trainer Mike Nault told The Insider from the Calgary-area track this week.

“She trains herself hard. She’s 110 per cent,” he said of the filly who has won all eight of her races--all stakes races--at ASD before hitting the road for her first race at another track.

He said he expects a short field for the race, with her main competition likely coming from 3-year-old BC-bred, Notice, who won the CTHS Sales Stakes as a 2-year-old both at Century Downs and at Hastings Park in Vancouver.

“On paper, Hidden Grace should win it,” Nault said. “We’ll give her this one more race, then turn her out for the winter and let her grow up a bit. She’s gonna be big!”

When she returns to race in the spring, he said it’s likely she’ll do what Escape Clause did: race at the Downs while looking for races elsewhere such as at Canterbury Park in Minnesota. He also said he believes she had the talent to win the Manitoba Derby, a race in which Escape Clause had finished second. She ran instead in the Manitoba Oaks and aired.

COUNTDOWN TO BREEDERS' CUP: Santa Anita, Nov. 1 & 2

1. Avoid the hype, do your own work – forget about going with the headline horse
2. Don’t be afraid to bet the favourite, especially in the Turf Sprint which has produced 40 per cent chalk winners
3. Take some shots. Breeders’ Cup is the best two days in racing to hit a big score and you only need one race to hit that home run. Swing for the fences with exactors, triactors and supers.  
4. Replays, replays and more replays. If you start now, you’ve got no excuse to not watch many prep races to find that diamond in the rough based on the horse’s last race gallop-out or possible bad trip against the track bias or troubled trip. These are all easily available through HPIbet. For the Euro race replays, simply go to YouTube and search for the name of the race you’re looking. Most of those races will be available there.  
5. Download the Breeders’ Cup App in the Android or Apple App stores and watch the early morning gallops and commentary daily from industry experts. Stay ahead of the curve with all the latest BC news and headlines with push notifications to your phone through the App.
6. Last year’s Breeders’ Cup races produced more short-priced winners than ever before. Will this year will be all longshots (15-1 or higher prices horses)? Who knows. One thing you should expect, however, is that there will be some longshots for sure as has been the case in all previous nine runnings of the BC at Santa Anita. Here’s a breakdown of the various positions of longshots: 1st – 14%, 2nd – 18%, 3rd – 33% and 4th – 35%.

7. Chad Brown has won the Juvenile Fillies race 4 out of 5 years

   Euros win the BC Turf – plain and simple. In the 35 years of the Breeders’ Cup Turf race, European-based horses have won 66 per cent of the time including nine of the last 11. With no Enable this year and Bricks and Mortar leaning to this race, it will be interesting to see if this trend continues.
8. Americans win the Juvenile Fillies Turf – in fact, Chad Brown has won this race four of the last five years and U.S.-based trainers have won nine of 11 versions.
9. Class wins the Classic. Look for the classiest horse in the race and bet him. On paper, it looks like McKinzie is the horse to beat. And, with Mike Smith replaced with Joel Rosario after a couple of suspect rides over the past several months, McKinzie should be primed for a big effort.
10. Monitor the Santa Anita surface biases. The newly-installed deeper dirt track is likely to play more fair than previous years when speed and pressers have had a distinct advantage. And, with the turf sprint now being run at 5 furlongs as opposed to the previous 6.5 furlongs down the hill, it’s important to remember that inside speed horses or pressers have been winning 90 per cent of these races so far at this meet.

Marshall and Glen have media credentials at Santa Anita. Follow their reports, observations and possible scoops all week by staying connected with the ASD social media channels.

What horses have been racing for the biggest purses?

1. IN TURF RACES LOOK FOR HORSES WHO HAVE RACED FOR HIGHEST PURSES: This is simple. Year after year, The Insider has shown you can separate out the major contenders in a BC turf route race by examining the purses each horse has recently been racing for. You’ll require the Equibase program for this; the DRF doesn’t list purse values in U.S. stakes races, only for European ones.

2. TAKE CLOCKER REPORTS TO HEART: You’ve been repeatedly urged to watch clocker reports posted online by DRF’s Mike Welsch. His reports are free at Breeders’ Cup Clocker Reports. Don’t let yourself down.

3. EXAMINE IN-THE-MONEY STATS FOR EACH HORSE: Read last week’s Insider to jog your memory on how doing something very simple can pay very big. That simple thing is to calculate each horse’s in-the-money finishes. Example: eight in-the-money finishes out of 10 starts.

I twigged to this betting angle while perusing old Breeder’s Cup programs. Example: In the 2006 BC Distaff, the horse with 10 out of 10 in-the-money finishes won the race (Round Pond) and paid $28. A superfecta box of the six horses with the best in-the-money stats produced a $16,900 payoff for a $1 ticket. Crazy!

4: DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR OPINIONS: The simple fact is, our opinions are wrong more often than they are right. And the player with the loudest opinion is usually more often wrong than right. Only listen to those with proven track records and follow “rules” as much as possible such as observing the three tips above.

5. GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO WIN BIG: Give yourself permission to collect a big score. Why not? Aren’t you worthy? The biggest change in a famous lawyer’s life (i.e. winning more jury trials) came when he gave himself permission to be better at jury addresses. Pools are huge; you deserve to share in them.

TRIVIA TEASER: What is speed guru Andy Beyer’s favourite angle for playing simulcast races? (a) jockey/trainer stats (b) track bias (c) speed figures (d) equipment changes. See answer at the bottom.