Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Jerry Bailey Announces Retirement

My annual trip to Saratoga this August will be minus one key player. Jerry Bailey, one of the all-time great jockeys, will retire later this month.

You always miss the best jockeys, but I have to say that I won't miss him driving honest 6-1 shots down to 5-2 on the board.

1 Comments:

Blogger JMW said...

I know I shouldn't take the bait, but: Good jockeys, in theory, improve a horse's chances of winning. And Bailey often tears it up in Saratoga, so you'd often see a horse -- to use my example, which is a random one -- start at 6-1 odds in the morning ($12 back on a $2 bet; duh), and slowly creep down to 5-2 ($5 for $2) because the bettors like the fact that Bailey is riding. And you can't blame them, because Bailey did often win handily on horses that didn't look THAT great on paper. But still, it's never fun to have value taken away. OK, I'm late for my GA meeting now.

10:14 AM  

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