North America Cup fair odds: Tactics shape a competitive race

The North America Cup annually proves itself a perplexing race to bet. Being so early on the harness racing calendar, we don’t see many of last year’s champion 2-year-olds make the transition so soon into June’s best 3-year-old; conversely, we don’t also see who would become the champion 3-year-old by season’s end have a North America Cup victory on their resume. It’s a wild race, but that’s exactly what you want for the $1,000,000 price tag.

Since 2010, only five favorites have won in the North America Cup. Upsets of varying magnitudes have piled in this race from Sweet Lou faltering to an 8-1 Thinking Out Loud in 2012 to 7-1 Desperate Man soaring over Bulldog Hanover, who later became the fastest horse in harness racing history, in 2021. And just last year, the nearly indestructible Confederate landed one of his few resume blemishes when just missing to the front-stepping It’s My Show.

But this year’s North America Cup, in my 15 years of watching this race, is the toughest to pin. In part that’s because no horse has stamped themselves a clear league over the others, but also there are many that have softly stamped themselves as promising horses. The targeting of this race is clear on every single finalists’ page too – most of these horses have not played their full hand on the track just yet. And so we have to factor that element into this race too – the element of what’s observable but existing purely in the abstract of experience and imagination.

Tactically, this race is a mess. The first-grade thought is “everyone leaves”. But just as your uncle at the Thanksgiving table would say, “everyone can’t have or do everything.” Thanks, Uncle.

The evenness of my fair-odds line is just accounting for the uncertainty of trips and tactical edge inside of this race. Let’s begin simply with the first stage of the race, the setting of the Uncle’s Thanksgiving table so to speak. We thankfully have a reliable type like Funtime Bayama inside of this race; we know he wants to go for the lead, but how hard he has to go for the lead not only impacts his chances but others inside of this race. Nancy Takter’s pair of Ivy Park and Total Stranger both drawing outside posts make them logical leavers to possibly catalyze a cataclysmic pace, which possibly hurts Funtime Bayama and helps many of the possible off the speed types in this race. That pair launching for forward spots together though is ultimately a coin flip, because Total Stranger is possibly the fastest horse off the gate in this race and Ivy Park is more of a floater. But Ivy Park would likely be best suited to try and sit the pocket to his stablemate, so reason says the first quarter could be torrid.

And because of, at least, Total Stranger’s speed guaranteeing him early position, this makes Funtime Bayama’s placement into the race tricky. It makes Captains Quarters’s placement into the race tricky as well; there’s a universe where Funtime Bayama can grab the lead and Captains Quarters grabs his pocket. There’s a universe where Captains Quarters grabs the lead. I think we exist in the universe where Captains Quarters will try from off the speed, but hopefully the ping-ponging in the direction of what I’m saying illustrates my point. We have to approach this race almost on a blank blackboard, trusting that most of these horses are talents, are in form and are just hoping to luck into the right trip.

This makes our job making an odds line a little easier then. We stand in a race where five horses share near equal ownership for the best chance to win, give or take a few points. I have a few points of an edge to Nijinsky just given his post draw should allow him to get into the spot he needs to do his best work, but his edge is not overwhelming given the chance he could also accidentally get placed into a bad spot if too aggressive. Captain Albano loses a few points of an edge just from the post draw; his preferred racing style remains inconclusive but if he is going to try and go forward, he’ll have to use more muscle from an inside post than he might an outside one.

And Legendary Hanover has the least edge just on his second-place finish in his elimination. He was in a spot where he realistically should have held off Funtime Bayama, but offered nothing when called upon for the first time this whole season. At the same time, he has shown speed that no one else in this field has as a 2- and 3-year-old, including when he paced a :52.2 back half to finish second in the Somebeachsomewhere. He’ll have to hope for the cataclysmic pace to develop because any bet on him really is placed with faith that he has not taken a step backwards.

The others – Storm Shadow, Captain Luke, Ivy Park, Total Stranger and Janelle Granny – have their best chances hidden somewhere in the ether, likely at the intersection of luck and circumstance that sits beyond the reach of a big-brained mammal like myself. But, like all things, the possibility remains.

Coverage of the North America Cup at Horse Racing Nation is made possible through a sponsorship by Woodbine.