Tips and Trends to Help Bet the Keeneland Spring 2023 Meet

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Keeneland Race Course, spring meet, jockeys, trainers, turf racing, Blue Grass Stakes, post positions, Wesley Ward, Brad Cox, Tyler Gaffalione, Irad Ortiz Jr.
Horses round into the homestretch at picturesque Keeneland Race Course during their spring 2019 meet. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Kentucky racing is reborn in earnest each spring with the opening of the three-week Keeneland spring meet, which this year will begin on Friday, April 7 and continue until Friday, April 28. The short but sweet meet will host 19 stakes races, many of which happen on opening weekend including Keeneland’s Longines Kentucky Oaks prep, the $600,000, Grade 1 Central Bank Ashland Stakes on April 7, and Keeneland’s Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve prep, the $1 million, Grade 1 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes on April 8.

Keeneland’s spring meet isn’t only about great stakes races. It’s really about great day-to-day racing every Wednesday through Sunday that makes Keeneland a must-bet race meet for racing fans and horseplayers every April. Keeneland will be closed on Easter Sunday, April 9.

Track trends

Coady Photography

From a handicapping perspective, Keeneland is known as a good place for inside speed, and the inside posts are still the place to be on the main track, especially in dirt routes where post 1 is expected to win about 20% of the races. In dirt routes, the majority of the races are won by horses breaking from posts 1-4. For example, at the most recent Keeneland meet in fall of 2022, 33 of the 46 dirt routes at the meet were won from posts 1-4.

Inside posts are particularly important at the distance of one mile, where a horse drawn outside needs to have speed to avoid being at a disadvantage. Keeneland dirt mile races feature a 70-yard run-up to help give horses and jockeys enough time to prepare for the first turn. Those races finish at the sixteenth pole, and the short stretch further emphasizes the advantage horses with speed or tactical speed enjoy in those races.

In dirt sprints, the inside advantage is less pronounced, but even when the rail post does not do well, such as was the case at the 2022 Keeneland fall meet, it still helps to have an inside or middle post. However, the outside posts are not a strong hindrance like they are in route races. Speed is a major factor and a necessity in Keeneland’s short sprints, but those are mostly run for juveniles, many of whom are first-time starters.

As far as the preferred Keeneland main track running styles, horses have their best chances to win by staying within two lengths of the lead at the first call in sprints, and within four lengths of the lead at the first call in routes. Front-runners do best at six furlongs (20% wire-to-wire and 33% of the winners on the lead or close). Dirt races at 1 1/16 miles have about 20% wire-to-wire winners.

Keeneland turf racing

Top-class turf racing at Keeneland. (Eclipse Sportswire)

The other main staple of the quality day-to-day racing at Keeneland is the great turf racing, which features big full fields, tons of value, and loads of good betting opportunities.

Post position is an important handicapping factor on the Keeneland grass course. In Keeneland turf routes, inside posts are the best with gates 1-5 posting the highest winning percentages, but middle posts are also OK all the way out to post 8. The far outside posts, however, are not good in Keeneland grass routes. Based on a large sample size in turf routes run at Keeneland since the fall of 2014, the posts outside No. 8 average far worse winning percentages than do the inside and middle draws. At the most recent Keeneland meet in fall 2022, only four of 39 turf routes were won by horses breaking from post 9 and outward. At one spring meet a few years ago, those outside posts combined to go 0-for-47. They have been only slightly better since.

Keeneland was relatively late to the game when it comes to turf sprints, but the track is running more of them now than ever before. There were 16 turf sprints run at the 2022 fall meet. Speed did well in those races, especially when the turf is firm. There seems to be little or no post position bias with horses winning from inside, middle, or outside draws, but sample sizes in these races are not big. In the small amount of turf sprints Keeneland does run, averaging about one race a day, expect trainer Wesley Ward to do extremely well. His horses will usually be favored, however, so expect low odds on the tote board.

Keeneland spring trainers to watch

Wesley Ward (Eclipse Sportswire)

Speaking of Wesley Ward, he has become the perennial leading trainer at the Keeneland spring meet, thanks to his barn full of fast sprinters and his precocious 2-year-olds, which often get unveiled in Keeneland’s early-season juvenile races. Ward won the 2022 spring training title with 13 wins (26%) to beat out Brad Cox, who was second with 11 wins (27%). Chad Brown was third with nine wins (24%).

The standings were tilted to Ward even more in spring 2021 when he ran away with the meet title, posting 20 wins (36%) to Cox’s 10 wins (34%). Notable in 2021 was Todd Pletcher’s meet, in which he went 9-for-19 for 47% wins. There was no spring meet in 2020. In 2019, Ward was the leading trainer with 11 wins, followed by Cox with 10 and Brown with 9. Pletcher won 5 of 14 starts (36 percent). Other trainers to focus on include Mike Maker and Bill Mott. Based on past meets, most of Ward’s and Brown’s winners are likely to come on the turf, while nearly all of the winners for Pletcher and Cox are likely to be on the main track in the spring at Keeneland.

One trainer angle to watch for at Keeneland involves cutbacks in distance. Horses cutting back in distance from a race at a mile or longer last time into a sprint are better bets at Keeneland than almost anywhere else. Particular trainers who seem to excel with this angle include Dallas Stewart, Graham Motion, and Ian Wilkes.

Keeneland spring jockey colony

In the jock’s room, expect an extraordinarily strong colony at Keeneland’s spring meet. Tyler Gaffalione edged Irad Ortiz Jr. 19 wins to 18 to take the 2022 Keeneland spring riding title, and that pair will both be back atop the standings this season along with a who’s who of national top jockeys behind them including Luis Saez, Joel Rosario, Florent Geroux, and many more. Gerardo Corrales racks up wins aboard many of Wesley Ward’s horses at the meet. Last year, Flavien Prat rode the Keeneland spring meet for the first time and immediately landed in the top three jockeys in terms of wins, going 15-for-66 (23%).

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