ENTHUSIAST OF ALL

An outstanding card is featured for Saturday’s Pegasus event at Gulfstream Park, the first big betting weekend of the new year following the Breeders’ Cup. This sequence looms an incredibly challenging and difficult one, but does not figure to chalk out the way that last weekend’s LeComte card did. In fact, we can find reasons to pick multiple holes in all four of the morning line favorites in this sequence. While some will be used defensively in multis, this provides the opportunity to find value in exacta and trifecta bets that keep some favorites off of the top line, or out of the money altogether.

These picks list only the horses we would consider playing underneath in the deepest of exotic wagers, and runners not listed can be considered a tosses from all wagers in our view. They are presented in order of preference, with green cells indicating top selections and potential win contenders, and yellow cells representing potential backups and defensive uses of favorites in multis. Again, a sound strategy for the card appears to be trying to hit exactas that exclude the favorites that we want to stand against.

Notably, from a thematic standpoint, we are generally favoring runners cutting back over dirt from 9f to 8f, and fading horses stretching out in both dirt races, whether it be from 7f to 8f, or 8f to 9f. Conversely, we are taking the opposite approach in the turf races, and downgrading the favorites cutting back to distances that appear a bit short of their best. Good luck!