Rachel Alexandra highlights Personal Ensign Stakes

Horseracing Betting Lines

08/26/2010 - Saratoga Springs, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Rachel Alexandra, 2009 Horse of the Year, gets back into action Sunday in the $300,000 Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. The four-year-old filly will take on four female challengers in the 1 1/4-mile race, her first attempt at the distance.

"Rachel feels very much at home among the great Saratoga fans," said co-owner, Jess Jackson when he announced that the filly would start in the Personal Ensign. "It's an historic race, named after a great champion. The timing is right for Rachel. She's been coming back into her stride and this will help her prepare for the rest of her campaign and the Breeders' Cup later this year."

Last year at Saratoga, Rachel defeated older male horses in the 1 1/8- mile Woodward Stakes.

Rachel Alexandra, trained by Steve Asmussen, will again be ridden by Calvin Borel and the pair will break from post two in the five horse field. Borel has been the champion's only race rider the last 13 starts.

The champion filly won the $400,000 Lady's Secret Stakes at Monmouth Park on July 24 in her most recent start. This year she has won two of four races, including her last two, for $498,376. In her career she has earned nearly $3.5 million with 13 wins in 18 starts.

While Rachel is expected to be a heavy favorite on Sunday, she will face formidable opposition.

Delaware Handicap winner Life At Ten should prove to be a difficult mare with which to contend. The five-year-old, like Rachel, is a speed horse who went wire-to-wire last time out at Delaware Park.

Trained by Todd Pletcher, Life At Ten will be ridden by John Velazquez from post four. The chestnut mare, owned by Candy DeBartolo, is undefeated this year in four starts. In addition to the Del 'Cap, Life At Ten has won the Ogden Phipps, Sixty Sails and Rare Treat Stakes. In her career she has won seven of 14 starts for $909,267.

"She's in very good form right now, and she's obviously on a winning streak," Pletcher noted. "I think her races this year have been better than some have given her credit for, but I also think it's a very, very tall order to take on Rachel Alexandra."

Here is the complete field for the Personal Ensign in post position order: Miss Singhsix, Jose Valdivia, Jr.; Rachel Alexandra, Calvin Borel; Persistently, Alan Garcia; Life At Ten, John Velazquez and Classofsixtythree, Javier Castellano.

The Personal Ensign has a scheduled post-time of 6 p.m. (et).

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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