Players who shunned 3-year-old horses in the opening day card at Woodbine might have had a very good day. After all, 3-year-olds have limited racing experience and many can’t fully compete with older horses until September or so.
Here’s what happened in races race 3 to 5:
RACE 3: Six-horse field ‒ four 3-year-olds and two 4-year-olds. The 4-year-olds finished first and third at odds of 14-1 and 5-1.
RACE 4: Eight-horse field ‒ four 3-year-olds and four 4-year-olds. Again, 4-year-olds finished first and third at odds of 7-1 and 2-1.
RACE 5: Six-horse field ‒ two 3-year-olds. A 5-year-old won at 5-1 and a 4-year-old finished second at 2-1.
A $1 pick-3 wheeling the older horses in each of those races paid $1,467! Ticket cost: 2 x 4 x 4 = $32. See the Equibase program pages here.
This doesn’t happen all the time, of course. Race 6 was won by a 3-year-old and in the next day’s races, two races were won by 3-year-olds. But most races on opening day show the vulnerability of 3-year-olds and the riskiness of keying them on tickets.
Longshot of The Week
70-1 Infinite Passion, a 3-year-old filly, ran second in the last race on Woodbine’s opening day card, a maiden event. Her place price was $43.10. Finishing first and third were the only two 4-year-olds in the race which otherwise had six 3-year-olds. A $1 triactor paid $460. A 20-cent superfecta paid $1,537.
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Ivan Bigg was a long-time Assiniboia Downs columnist whose main claim to Canadian betting fame was winning four entire superfecta pools ‒ three at Woodbine and one at Fort Erie ‒ all in the $20,000 range when the minimum superfecta wager was $1.
