Post time at Belmont Park

Greetings, folks. Bob Ehalt here, and I’d like to thank Ed DeRosa for letting me borrowing his digs here at the Big Event Blog for the next few days as I chat up the $1 million Belmont Stakes (G1) with you.

I’ve promised Ed I’ll be a good guest, so he shouldn’t worry about finding dirty dishes in the sink or old, nasty milk in the frig when he returns. My hope is to leave behind some tidy and pertinent thoughts and observations about the Belmont. I’ll be posting items here throughout the days leading up to the final leg of the Triple Crown and on Saturday I’ll be blogging all day long on the Belmont and the undercard – except when the Yankees game diverts my attention.

Hopefully some of you know me from my work here with the Thoroughbred Times and Thoroughbred Times Today over the years. I write the Ragozin Insider articles for Today and the TT website so I’ll give you a Sheets Guy’s perspective of Saturday’s card. You might also know me from my blog at ntra.com and if you’re from Fairfield County in Connecticut you might have read my stories in your daily newspaper.

I’m offering this introduction now because today’s main news about the Belmont is not as important as you might think. Unlike the post position draws for the first two legs of the Triple Crown, all we learned today is that 12 horses will be running on Saturday. If you draw post one or post 12 in the Belmont Stakes it really doesn’t make that much of a difference. To check out the posts, here’s a link to Frank Angst’s story on the draw.

With a long run to the first turn and Belmont’s sweeping turns, ground loss is not as big of an issue as it is at Churchill Downs or Pimlico. Even in a 12-horse field, it’s unlikely that anyone will get parked four horses wide on the first bend unless their jockey decides to ride with a blindfold on.

Nor is there typically a strong inside bias that helps horses who land the first few posts. Ground loss might certainly cost a horse the length or two that might mean the difference between first or third, but let’s just say there’s no reason to toss First Dude from your exotics simply because he landed post 11 today.

There will be plenty of time on Saturday for him to work his way inside.

Looking over the 42 editions of the Belmont Stakes since the Elmont, N.Y., oval reopened in 1968 pretty much backs that point. If you check out an attached Google document (that I can hopefully link to), you’ll see that in that time frame there have been 24 Belmonts with a double-digit field. On 11 of those occasions, a horse from post 8 or beyond has won the race, which adds up to 45.8 percent.

Here’s another way to look it at. Split the field for each race in half. Say in an eight-horse field that the first four posts are inside and the last four outside. With an odd number like 11, make the dividing line 5 ½ which means 1-5 are inside and 6-11 are outside. The numbers in that case are 20 for the inside posts and 22 for the outside posts.

Wherever you land, you have a sporting chance. So let’s not sweat the posts.

Running style is much more important. Sure, a mile-and-a-half race sounds perfect for a stone-cold closer. But in those 42 Belmonts, 25 of the winners have been on the lead or within 3 lengths of the lead at the opening ¼ call. My calculator says that’s 59.5 percent.

At the half-mile pole the numbers are 21 of 42 (50 percent, and I did that one all by myself) for the same category of on the lead or within 3 lengths.

Conversely, horses who were last at the first call are now 1 for 42 (2.3 percent), with only Jazil in 2006 rallying from last to capture the carnations.

So that’s it for a quick look at the stats.

I’ll be back in a bit – unless the landlord here at the BEB boots me for playing the Wu-Tang Clan too loudly - to take a look at who’s hot and who’s not in the field.

If you get a chance, feel free to post a comment with your thoughts about which stats matter most.