Never mind posterity, what'd the double pay?
Because horse racing is a betting sport, it’s common for fans to watch even the most historic event with their own self-interests uppermost in mind.
Probably, somewhere in the crowd the day Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths was a guy who went home disappointed because My Gallant blew the place.
In that spirit, we give you Kurt Hoover, host of Hollywood Park’s simulcast television show, watching Sunday afternoon on a press-box TV screen as jockey Russell Baze closed in on Laffit Pincay’s all-time victories record of 9,530.
Hoover’s boss told him that if Baze won Sunday’s first two races at Bay Meadows to pull within two of Pincay, he should hop on a plane and get to the Bay Area track in time to cover the jockey’s four later races. LAX is a few minutes from Hollywood Park, and the San Francisco airport is a few minutes from Bay Meadows. Baze wasn’t scheduled to ride between the second and sixth races, giving Kurt two hours to go 400 miles from Inglewood to rainy San Mateo.
Hoover did what any veteran horseplayer would have done: He bet a daily double on Baze’s horses in races 1 and 2. That way, if Baze won both and forced Hoover into a highly inconvenient dash north, Kurt would get an unofficial financial bonus for his trouble.
“At least I’ll have some traveling money,” Hoover said.
Baze’s first horse, Playing ’R Song, led from the start and won. Then Baze’s second horse, Candi's Double, closed with a rush and won.
The good news for Hoover was that his $20 bet on the Baze-Baze daily double returned $138. The better news was that the boss called off his trip, gambling (as it were) that Baze wouldn’t break the record Sunday.
For racing historians, the story was that Baze went winless the rest of the afternoon and ended Bay Meadows’ racing week with 9,428 victories, meaning he’ll resume on Wednesday needing three to beat Pincay.
“On a selfish note, the double hit and I don’t have to go,” said Hoover, 44, a Long Beach resident. He called his double the “Selfish Play of the Weekend.”
Nothing wrong with that. It’s horse racing, after all.