Is that the draw or is it just a list?

I was going to title this entry 'What are the flipping odds?' but my brother called me today and asked 'is that the draw or is it just a list?" He, like the rest of us, flat out couldn't believe what happened...again.

So, back to the other question. Instead of throwing out some ill advised number or comment, I decided to do that math. In the course of a draw in a 10 horse field, drawing each position has equal probability, so you have a 10% chance at landing each spot. A new draw for a new race is a new unique event. So what are the odds of drawing 10 (10%), 10 (10%) 9 or 10 (20%) and 10 (10%). Simply: 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.2 x 0.1 = 0.0002. In a more familiar form to horse racing, the odds of drawing 10, 10, 9, 10 is 5,000 to 1. There’s your flipping odds.

By now I’m sure you realized the somewhat shocking fact we drew post 10 for the final of the Junior Trendsetter series at the Meadowlands on Saturday night. We somehow persevered to overcome 5,000 to 1 odds to draw this poorly. Monumental frustration is a bit of an understatement at this point. For the record I’m not taking the conspiracy theory route. I’m not buying that the Meadowlands has David Stern like frozen envelopes to banish poor In Over My Head and his Sconny owners and Illinois based trainer to a far outside post. I’d be lying if I told you that thought didn’t cross my mind, but it didn’t last long at all. We are just in a major drawing funk right now. That’s all there is to it.

You know what I hope? I hope that the oddsmakers put In Over My Head down as a 5,000 to 1 shot in the program on Saturday. We’ve overcome those odds once…why not twice??? That way my $10 win ticket could be worth $50,000. I could buy another horse! Maybe he or she would draw better…

Since I’m a positive person, I’m going to focus on one big positive. We have our driver, Andy Miller, back with us. I think he will make a big difference. Hopefully we can somehow find a spot early and catch some race flow. He’s good enough to race with this bunch and when you go for $82,500, even 5th place is worth $4,125. Take my half and add it to my $50,000 win ticket and that’s a pretty good payday. Have to try and find some levity in situations like these.