Next-best thing to Rachel and Zenyatta

Horseracing Betting Lines

08/19/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Since it doesn't appear that Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta will race against each other before the Breeders' Cup in November, Saturday's meeting between leading three-year-old fillies Devil May Care and Blind Luck will have to do.

Devil May Care and Blind Luck are the featured fillies in Saturday's $500,000 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. Each is ranked in the NTRA Thoroughbred Poll, eighth and seventh, respectively. Devil May Care has been made the 7-5 morning-line favorite with Blind Luck next at 8-5.

The two will take on four other three-year-old ladies.

Devil May Care, trained by Todd Pletcher, has the home field advantage for the event. She won last month's Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga by four lengths.

"She's held her form since the Coaching Club, which I don't think was a particularly taxing race for her, and so far everything is going to plan," said Pletcher. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for Blind Luck, and I'm looking forward to the race. You're putting the two most accomplished fillies on the racetrack and that's what everyone wants to see."

Devil May Care also won the Mother Goose Stakes at Belmont Park in June. Back in May the filly was part the of the 20 horse field in the Kentucky Derby. She finished 10th, right in the middle behind Super Saver, another Pletcher trainee.

Blind Luck comes into the Alabama from her home base at Santa Anita Park. Trained by Jerry Hollendorfer, the filly won the Kentucky Oaks by a nose the day before the Run for the Roses. There is no word as to whether Devil May Care and Blind Luck met while both were stabled at Churchill Downs.

"I don't think this is to the level that Rachel and Zenyatta were at," Hollendorfer said about Saturday's meeting, "but, you know, I think this is a race that the fans want to see.

"I'm not looking at it as a two-horse race. And I don't believe that from what I read Todd Pletcher said, he's not either. And I've already run against another good horse (Havre de Grace) and barely beat her by Tony Dutrow. So, you know, I don't really look at it as a showdown. Everybody that's going in there thinks that they have a chance. And so we have to beat everybody, not just one horse."

Hollendorfer, who is a co-owner of Blind Luck, has sent his filly out 12 times in her short career. She's come back a winner eight times with two seconds and two more third-place finishes, earning better than $1.5 million.

Her most recent race was the Delaware Oaks at Delaware Park. Sent off as the 1-5 favorite, she needed every inch of the 1 1/16-miles to post a nose victory over Havre de Grace.

"Well, I think that my horse can run on any surface," Hollendorfer noted. "And, you know, she's run on the off track and on the synthetic and on dirt, so the only thing we haven't tried her on is turf.

"I think all of these fillies have to prove that they can run a mile and quarter and I'm going to throw out Devil May Care's race in the Kentucky Derby, that mile and quarter. That track wasn't in the greatest shape that day. I think you could throw that race out, so all of these are going to have to prove that they can do the mile and quarter."

Brothers Tony and Rick Dutrow will each be represented in the Alabama.

Tony has Delaware Oaks runner-up Havre de Grace and Rick sends out Black-Eyed Susan winner Acting Happy.

"We are over the moon about Havre de Grace," said trainer Tony Dutrow. "She's improved in every one of her starts. The Delaware Oaks, the first graded stakes of her career, I'm very, very proud of what she did. Now, she's going to go 1 1/4-miles against the very best of her generation.

"It's a mountain to climb, and we're going into it with our eyes wide open, but we're feeling very good about her and are going to give it a try. I think she'll run great, and I hope she runs great enough."

Acting Happy finished third to Devil May Care in the Coaching Club American Oaks.

"She's got to come forward, that's for sure, because (Devil May Care is) a very nice filly and so is Blind Luck," said Rick, the older of the Dutrow siblings. "So she definitely has her work cut out for her."

Tizahit and Connie and Michael completes the field for the 1 1/4-mile Alabama.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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