HORSE RACING : Workout Data Gives California Bettors an Edge

DEL MAR —  In the early morning hours, as hundreds of horses exercise on the Del Mar track, Bruno De Julio watches from the top level of an almost-deserted grandstand. Wielding two stopwatches, binoculars and a tape recorder, he is rattling off a non-stop commentary on the activity below him.

“Elytis is coming down the lane for Frankel, not much energy. . . . We’ve got a Robert Marshall bay, it looks like Border Mate, thirty-five and four-fifths. . . . We’ve got one for Baffert, no marks, twelve and one fifth through the turn, really like the way this one quickens. . . . “

De Julio became a racetrack clocker after working as an investigator for commercial stores, sometimes conducting undercover sting operations. It was an appropriate career choice, because his new profession is one that requires detective work and keen observation--not just the ability to click a stopwatch.

When he doesn’t recognize a horse, De Julio notes the trainer’s saddlecloth and the animal’s markings. After workouts are finished, he spends the balance of the morning deducing which horse was which, reviewing his observations and writing commentaries that will appear in a California publication, the Daily Racing Digest.

While De Julio is working, rival clockers are doing the same, trying to glean insights that the other guys missed. “This is no fraternity,” De Julio said. “There’s plenty of backstabbing.”

Clockers are collecting data for three other publications or tip sheets. A team of clockers employed by the racetrack is recording the official workout times that will appear in the Daily Racing Form. From the box seats in the grandstand, several private clockers are gathering information they will use for gambling purposes or to sell to clients.

Collectively, the information that these clockers generate make California racing fans the best-informed in the world. And the existence of this information changes the very nature of the horse-betting game.

Before the 1970s, California was like most other states today, with published workout times unreliable and genuine information the private property of insiders. Independent clockers weren’t even allowed inside the track for workouts. But then the state adopted a rule that assured the accurate reporting of workouts, by requiring trainers to identify horses when they came onto the track.

A clocker named Jay Clark was the first great success of this new era, cashing bets on 2 year olds and claiming horses who turned out to be stakes winners. With the large betting pools in the booming California racing game, there was no question that workout information could be extremely lucrative.

There are as many as 20 private clockers operating in California. One, who identified himself as Clocker Bob, said that seeing the horses day to day is an invaluable edge in handicapping: “You get to know these horses so well they’re sort of like your adopted sons.”

Most of these private clockers, however, depend on selling their information to clients, and Clocker Bob admitted there’s a lot of hype in his end of the business: “Your success is your ability to sell; you’ve got to be able to keep (the clients) coming back.”

However, these private clockers encounter tough competition because so much insightful commentary on workouts is available cheap from such publications as the Daily Racing Digest and the Handicapper’s Report.

For an Easterner, accustomed to a shroud of secrecy surrounding fast first-time starters, the availability of this information is stunning. When a precocious 2 year old named Sardula made her racing debut Saturday, every published commentary on workouts gave her rave reviews and declared her the best young prospect in trainer Brian Mayberry’s talent-packed barn. There were no conspiratorial whispers that would have accompanied the debut of such a horse in Maryland. The public knew as much as the insiders, and Sardula was properly an odds-on favorite when she romped to victory.

Published workout information sheds light on races here in many other ways. Last week a colt named Harlem Boy looked like a logical favorite in a sprint here; he was the lone front-runner in a weak field, and held a class edge too.

But four days earlier he had worked five furlongs in 1 minute 1 4/5 seconds, and the Handicappers’ Report commented, “Struggled late and really didn’t look very good despite being urged in the final furlong.” De Julio wrote: “Finished too bad to be believed. Is something wrong here?”

Anywhere else in the racing world, Harlem Boy’s resounding defeat as a 6-5 favorite would have mystified bettors or led some to harbor suspicions of larceny. But studious Californians understood what had happened.

Relating the form of horses to the way they train is such a critical aspect of the game here that Californians wonder how horseplayers elsewhere can function without all the necessary information. And Eastern visitors who incorporate workouts into their handicapping arsenal wonder how they can go home again.