This was originally posted to Josh Hanson’s twitter feed, @barbaro1420, on January 8, 2019.
On October 12, 2018, I hit the pick 5 at Keeneland for more than $20,000, on a ticket that cost $120 for 60 cents. Here’s a look at how I played it.
Race 6 was a maiden special weight with a bunch of first time starters. None of them were taking a bunch of cash. And the 8 horse would likely have taken a lot more cash if the connections were thought more highly of. Wohlers gave jockey Villasana another shot, which gave me confidence to single. It worked out well, as she cruised to a fairly easy win.
Race 7 was a salty allowance group on the turf. I was looking to play against the 1 horse, who was ridden by Jose Ortiz. In my opinion, Jose struggles navigating through traffic. This horse, although the fastest on paper, had to navigate his way through most of the field to win the race.
I ended up on the outside two runners. I thought: if Joe Sharp thought enough to claim one away from Maker, he’s gotta be talented, and Brad Cox has a horse in career form. Both figured to be close to the pace and in good position to win at the top of the stretch.
Turns out Jose did a good job of getting into a winning position late, but the miracle of Brad Cox’s training methods kept the 11 going enough for the 1 not to go by. That’s two races down, three more to go.
Race 8 was an ultra-competitive dirt allowance race. I was really tempted to use all of them in there, but I had seen a tweet from Ed DeRosa earlier in the day. In his tweet, Ed mentioned that the outside posts at Keeneland were struggling mightily in route races. I narrowed it down to the inside 5.
That information proved handy, as the 5 horses I had on the ticket were never in danger of not winning the race. Moving on.
Race 9 was a G3 stakes race going 5.5f on the grass. These races can be a little tricky to cap. It looked to have enough speed early in the race to take a shot with some horses that would be right behind the early front runners.
The 9 looked to be a horse that could stalk and pounce and the 11 looked like she’d enjoy getting back on firm ground with some legitimate pace to run at.
Ricardo Santana did a masterful job of letting the race unfold in front of him on the 9, and was able to blow by them late.
Race 10 featured $20,000 conditioned claimers. Ugh. I spent 5 minutes perusing through the runners and realized that a few weeks prior I was alive to a big score with a couple of the same horses in the race. I was hoping to catch some lightning in a bottle here and used them all.
As they came down the stretch for home, two horses emerged as win candidates: the 8 and 10. The same two horses that were dueling to the finish the last time they raced. The 10 put his head in front and I resigned myself to getting the lower of the two payouts just like last time.
This time was different however. Between some really aggressive riding from Sammy Camacho jr., and maybe a bit of a gold rail, he managed to implore All Hansen’s on Deck to the finish line first, and got me the big payday.