What are the chances?

Three champions return to the races on Saturday.

Zenyatta begins her defense of the older female Eclipse Award in the Santa Margarita Handicap at Santa Anita Park while Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra faces older females for the first time in the New Orleans Stakes at Fair Grounds and two-year-old champion male Lookin At Lucky makes his three-year-old debut in the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park.

I give the filly and mare a 90% chance of winning their respective races with Lookin At Lucky just a 60% chance to win his given the surface question in addition to the layoff concerns that all three champions face. At those odds, it's more likely that at least one of them loses than they all win, though it's just a one out of 250 (.4%) chance that they all lose.

Probability fascinates me because it illustrates that things that seem automatic are anything but when viewed from a distance.

Let's take Zenyatta's undefeated, 14-race winning streak as a for instance. Accounting for takeout, bettors gave her a better than 50% chance of winning nine of those races. That means in five of her races, bettors saw Zenyatta has more likely to lose than to win, but she won them all.

Because of breakage, this is definitely an inexact science since I don't have access to pool totals, but even if we were able to bet on Zenyatta in all of her starts going back to the career debut maiden win in November 2007 at Hollywood Park and figured her to have a 95% chance of winning each race, it's still more likely that she would lose at least one race than win all 14.

Of course, she wasn't 95% to win all those races. And sure, knowing what we know now, she was definitely an overlay in races like her maiden win (13-to-2) and the Apple Blossom (9-to-5) and the Breeders' Cup Classic (5-to-2), but I could argue she was an underlay in other races like the 2008 BC Ladies' Classic (1-to-2).

Combine it all together, though, and it's still reasonable to say that the betting public tabbed Zenyatta as having a 1 in 43,205 (.0023145%) chance of winning all her races to date. It's an incredible feat what she's done--flipping a coin and having it land on heads 15 times in a row is more likely--and as has been reported elsewhere, a $2 parlay on all her wins would now be worth $12,000!

Rachel Alexandra's current nine-race winning streak is no small feat either, as bettors gave her about a .46% (1 in 217) chance of winning all those races, though a $2 parlay on that nonet only comes back $122.35, and Rachel Alexandra's streak is about 200 times more likely than Zenyatta's.

If each has a 90% chance of winning on Saturday, then there is an 81% chance each will have maintained her winning streaks ahead of the Apple Blossom where if both start there will be a 99.9% chance at least one will lose (assuming a 999-to-1 chance of a dead heat for win).

To view the spreadsheet I used to come up with these figures, click here.