I'm not sure how I feel about having to wade through European horses' past performances for the Breeders' Cup. Most of the horses are so good, I relatively enjoy it, and I also fool myself into thinking I have something of a handle on what I'm digesting. (I don't.) In practical terms, there probably is more of an opportunity for me to learn than just looking at North American past performances. I have a learning curve when it comes to European racing, while with North Anerican racing, I don't. I do run across things that are really different, that couldn't happen in America.
Take this, for example. Remember how I told you that in over 700 races with 12 horses running in America, I didn't see one favorite more pronounced than 1-2 odds? Well, BC Turf starter Sea Moon blew that out of the water when he broke his maiden. He was 1-5....and in a 14-horse field! On heavy ground, no less, that knocked the time for the mile of the race over 1:50. Like Hammer's Terror, the horse I saw who went off at 2/5 in a 12-horse field, and set a "new record" of sorts for favoritism, Sea Moon was coming off a 2nd by a nose in his debut. He was coming from a $11,100 maiden at Leicester to a $7,200 one at Yarmouth, so you all can be tell me whether the track shift represented an "Oh my God" drop.
The fact that any horse could be 1-5 in a 14-horse field in England precipitates any number of questions. Was this pari-mutuel betting, like we have in North America, or some other form of betting, like someone's line? Maybe the takeout was especially high at the track? On the latter score, I bet the odds for all of the horses could be looked up from the Racing Post, and the takeout calculated. (Again, it was Sea Moon's 2nd race, his maiden win, and on 10/26/10.) The story could also be ruined if Sea Moon was in fact part of an entry, and that wasn't recorded in The Racing Form. The mystery would then be solved in a very boring way. Sarafina, however, was listed as an entry in the 2010 Arc, so the Racing Form is, presumably, in the habit of marking entries in European races.
I suppose the 14-horse field in Sea Moon's race also doesn't mean there were 14 betting interests, just 14 horses. The 700+ sample I cited contaned only cases with 12 betting interests. But as long as Sea Moon wasn't part of the entry, I wouldn't think his odds would be affected by whether or how the other entrants were grouped in the betting. He was still competing against 13 other horses people could bet, and drawing whatever percentage of the money.
The most interesting answer would just be if Sea Moon really was more heavily bet in this large field than any North American horse ever is. It would be doubly interesting if what happened with him wasn't extraordinary. Then I'd want to know if Europeans have a basis for what they're doing: do the heaviest favorites in large fields in Europe, at shorter odds than the heaviest favorites in large fields in the U.S., actually win more? So many questions. (I should say "so many questions, so little time," but I suspect "so much time" is more appropriate for these kinds of questions. Except, however, when dinner is looming. The latter imperative certainly makes proper punctuation suffer.)
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