Pedigree Handicapping 101: How to evaluate maiden races

It's summertime, and the 2-year-olds are popping up like daisies, or dandelions...depending on how you view maiden races.

Many handicappers get out the dart board when faced with mostly blank past performance section of maiden races. Some players scan the entries and then pick the horses from the barns of Ward, Pletcher, Brown, Casse, Baffert, Miller or D’Amato. If the race is part of a vertical combo like a Pick 4, 5 or 6, the top two or three horses with the lowest odds are tossed onto the ticket.

Sometimes the handicapper gets lucky. Most often they don’t. Doing your homework can lead to lucrative payoffs in maiden races.  

The hardest part of handicapping maiden events continues to be data, or rather, the lack thereof. Past performances don’t give the crucial detailed information needed to select maiden winners properly. Compiling the data for a maiden race can be a frustrating process. It takes time, effort and most importantly, knowing where to find the information. Then comes the skill learned through trial and error to pick the runners most likely to finish in the money.  

There are eight components to handicapping maidens. They include the four factors of pedigree handicapping; work reports; trainer and jockey stats; post position; and prior experience.

Here’s a quick rundown of the tools you need to figure out which runners have the best chance to put money into your pocket:

Pedigree

Naturally, pedigree plays a key role. The four elements of pedigree handicapping are precocity, class, distance, and surface.

Precocity

Sire stats come into play here. Percentage of 2-year-old winners is a start, but what percentage of starters won first time out? That’s the statistic you need to know. A stallion’s 25% 2-year-old win rate from starters is pretty good, but not if only 5% win first time out. Past Performances that offer pedigree ratings don’t give the entire story. For instance, their sire stats offer first-time starter win percentage of the sire total number of offspring, not the number of first-time winners from starters. For instance, on one company’s PPs, Bernardini has only an 11% first-time starter win rate from number of foals. In reality, he has 19.5% winners from first-time starters. That’s a dramatic difference.   

The female family is also an important clue to precocity. How many of the siblings won or placed in their first two starts? And if our contender is a first foal, did the dam and her siblings exhibit win-early tendencies? If it's a first foal out of an unraced mare, what then? That warrants digging into the second generation. 

Precocity data is tough for the average player to find unless they have a subscription to handicapping product that shows the info. The poor player without deep pockets best bet is to use a free pedigree database that offers the names of the horse’s siblings, and then look up racing info individually.   

Class

Next, figure out the average class level of the siblings, or if this is the first foal, the dam’s class level. Blacktype in the immediate family is a strong sign of class, especially juvenile blacktype. 

But what about the family without blacktype?  Allowance/Claimers at an “A” rated track like Saratoga or Del Mar face better competitors than those at, say, Evangeline Downs. Take that into consideration.

The next important question is, does this family win?  If our maiden is modestly bred, yet most of their siblings won or placed in most of their races, this is a good sign. However, the maiden whose half-siblings were a combined 1-for-20, or the dam was camera shy, often our maiden will follow suit. Some runners have beautiful pedigrees, but some branches just don’t pan out.

Yes, it’s a pain to look up all this data, but if that 4-1 horse you’re eyeing doesn’t have the same class level or winning family as the rest of the field, it will show.

Become familiar with the auction abbreviations, such as OBS, KEE, BARR, and FTF. Look at the sales prices of two-year-olds in training. Speed sells, and these babies do well in the early maiden races.

Distance

The summer’s events for 2-year-olds are sprints, and distances don’t lengthen until late summer or early fall. Often, when a baby is ready to run, the optimal race hasn’t been carded or has over-filled. Some trainers just want to get some experience into their youngsters, and winning the debut isn’t the goal. Get to know the trainers who follow this pattern. Most are conservative, with low win percentages with maidens, but they’ll have a strong number of in the money finishers.

A horse bred to win at middle or classic distances is obviously at a disadvantage against sprinter/miler types, especially during the summer. Their conformation is different, and it takes longer for them to develop physically. The offspring of Empire Maker, Pioneerof The Nile, and Medaglia d’Oro, to name a few, rarely win shorter sprints. American Pharoah found the 6 1/2 furlongs of his August debut too short but returned a month later to win the Del Mar Futurity at 7 furlongs.

Surface

The same situation as distance applies to surface. A maiden bred for turf might win on the dirt in their debut with raw talent, but not do so well in subsequent starts. “Turfy” horses can sometimes have a different conformation than their dirt counterparts. The hoof is broad and flat, and pasterns tend to be longer. Many have high knee action on the dirt.  A horse bred for dirt can have a narrower, tighter foot, and shorter pasterns. This isn’t always the case, but it is something to consider when looking at the pedigree and viewing horses in the paddock.  

Works

Work reports are one of the most valuable tools a handicapper can use for any race condition.

Knowing how the horse breezed in a single work is more important than knowing how fast he or she went. Would you rather back a horse who out-worked a stablemate in hand or a horse that was pushed hard to keep up? This factor applies to every type of race, not just maidens. However, breeze patterns are also useful, because they show training consistency…or not.  

Other Factors

A debut maiden in the inside post isn’t usually a good bet. They tend to break inward or become intimidated on the rail. Additionally, a horse breaking from the far outside post often breaks to the right, losing valuable ground while the jockey sorts him out.

A horse adding two or more furlongs against contenders with previous experience at the race distance is suspect unless the horse has solid stamina works of at least five furlongs or longer.

Review the work tab. A horse that has fired a last or second to last four-furlong bullet when there are at least four or more works at that distance is live, especially a first-time starter. This is especially true of horses from conservative barns. Often these horses go off at attractive odds.

Learn which trainers win with a high percentage of 2-year-olds.  Use the trainer and jockey stats in combination with the other tools.

Be wary of a young horse attempting three new conditions at the same time. Shipping to a new track, especially from a “B” or “C” rated track to an “A” level facility, adding an extra furlong, stepping up in class, and different surfaces should all be considered.

There is nothing like experience. In a field with mostly first timers, keep an eye on horses with previous starts. Even if they finished out of the money in their first attempts, they are better prepared than the rest, especially if they are breezing well in the morning.

Last, but most important, is to remember races aren’t won on paper. Learn the language of the horse and how to use physical handicapping to your advantage.  When reviewing a maiden race, it is crucial to see how the horses are behaving. Or not. A little sweat never hurt anyone, especially on a hot, humid day. A first-timer looking like a shampoo commercial can be tossed. Look for a horse that has a bounce in his step -- he’s eager, but not kicking, rearing or causing general havoc. There’s a shine to his coat, and you can tell he’s having a good day. 

It can take an hour or longer to properly research a full field of maidens and nail down the most likely runners to hit the board, but there’s plenty of information available for maiden races. It just takes a little more time to ferret it out.