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The Oaklawn Handicap is Saturday. Strong renewal. And every year when this race comes around, I think about Festin.
I think about the penthouse with no furniture. I think about the blow-up mattress and the patio chairs and that view from 19 floors up over the Atlantic that stretched all the way to Miami. I think about asking my girlfriend to take a cash advance on her credit card so I could bet more money on a horse race. And I think about Frank Gifford.
I wrote about this in 2015, but it deserves a revisit, because the race is back and the lesson never gets old.
It was 1991. I had moved to Florida from New York, found a oceanfront penthouse in Pompano Beach — about 30 minutes to both Calder and Gulfstream — and bet my way into a position where I had roughly $2,000 between me and total poverty. Not DOA money. But not comfortable money. I had a slump going that was grinding on me.
Then the Oaklawn Handicap appeared on the cover of the Form. Festin. Ron McAnally horse, deep closer, shipping in from California. The race had Unbridled — the Kentucky Derby winner — and Farma Way, the top handicap horse in the country. Those two were going to eat each other alive battling, figuratively speaking, and Festin was going to clean up the mess. Eddie Delahoussaye was riding. I was sure. I mean really sure.
I asked her to help. She didn’t like gambling. She didn’t like horse racing. She loved her credit. Somehow I convinced her, probably with the promise of Roche Bobois furniture. We went to the bank, got a $3,000 cash advance, and I had a $5,000 bankroll to work with.
I went to Calder to bet. I bet it almost all. Win ticket? No. I went exacta hard, just two , part wheel triples with the same two horses second— the whole architecture. Festin on top, every combination I needed underneath him. I left myself with just enough to buy the next day’s Form on the way to the car, because of course I was going to need it. I was that certain. If I was right and Festin won, Unbridled or Farma Way just had to be second. The score was in the exacta and triple, no win bet was needed. Guilty as charged being greedy and cocky, but hey, I needed the money.
Then I went home. Made a day of it at the beach. ABC was carrying the race on tape delay after Wide World of Sports. I had avoided the result all day. It was easy back then. No internet. No ADWs. No social media. Just me, the Atlantic, and the certainty that I was about to get flush.
I’m watching Wide World of Sports. Then Frank Gifford — Frank Gifford who I had nothing against — just casually announces it. Live. In the middle of the show. “This just in. In a major upset in horse racing today, Festin upsets Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled, resulting in record exacta and triple payoffs.” The race was scheduled to follow Wide world of Sports, Frank just blew the excitement of watching live, but it was all good, I won.
Record payoffs.
I wasn’t angry at first. I already knew I won. Festin was my horse. Unbridled would be second — that’s what Frank said, that’s what my exacta had. I had this.
Then the race came on and I watched Primal go. And go. And keep going. In the slop that had arrived at Oaklawn while I was sitting on my beach. Primal, who nobody was accounting for, who I certainly wasn’t accounting for, just ran off with the race under Earlie Fires while my closer was doing closer things somewhere down the track. I thought to myself when is he going to collapse like a soup sandwich. It has to be soon.
Festin did win. Paid over $20. Unbridled was nowhere. Primal held for second. Festin technically upset Primal.
I hated Frank Gifford. Who does that? He said “upset Unbridled.” Doesn’t that mean Unbridled ran second? Not when you’re in a slump. It means Frank Gifford has no idea what he’s reading and you have no tickets to cash.
The $50,000 I had contempt for on the win looked like a palace from where I was standing.
That was what feels like a lifetime ago. The Oaklawn Handicap is Saturday. And here’s what I’ve learned since that patio furniture afternoon that I want to pass along, because some of you are in a slump right now and some of you will be soon.
The slump didn’t lie to me. I lied to the slump.
I wasn’t wrong about Festin. I was right about Festin. What I did wrong was confuse certainty about the horse with certainty about the outcome. Those are two different things. The game is always going to hand you a race where you’ve done everything right and Primal goes out in the slop and runs off from everybody. That isn’t a malfunction. That’s the sport.
What I know now that I didn’t know then — or maybe knew but couldn’t implement — is that the slump doesn’t require you to bet bigger to get out of it. It requires you to bet smarter. There is a difference, and for most of my life I treated them as the same thing.
Pressing is not a character flaw. I still press. But pressing in a slump should mean finding your best spot, your highest-conviction play, and getting meaningful exposure on it in a high-percentage structure. Win bet. Win and exacta. Clean. Not a six-leg architecture where every combinatorial branch has to survive.
I had the right horse in 1991. I got destroyed because I built a structure that required not just Festin to win, but the second-place finisher to be one of two specific horses, and the third-place finisher to be one of several others. In a small field. Where the weather changed. Where a forgotten speed horse found the slop he was born to run in.
The slump will end. It always does. But don’t let it trick you into handing it more weapons than it already has.
If you’re running good right now, remember Primal. He’s always out there. Some speed horse you’ve dismissed, on a surface that’s about to change, with a jockey who’s going to find a way to keep him loose on the front end when nobody else thinks he can.
If you’re running cold right now, remember Festin. You’re going to be right about a horse again. When you are, cash it clean.
And if Frank Gifford is somehow reading this from wherever sportswriters go — I’ve mostly forgiven you. Mostly.
The Oaklawn Handicap is Saturday. I’m watching the whole thing live.
