Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Oct. 30, 2023

A good Monday morning to you all and welcome to Breeders’ Cup week! Very excited for the week ahead and can’t wait for Friday and Saturday. I’m a little sad not to be there, as Santa Anita is my favorite place to spend a day at the races as a fan, but I’ll be watching from beautiful Tampa Bay Downs for both days (pending getting out of my scheduled jury duty on Thursday. Who schedules jury duty on Breeders’ Cup week, c’mon, Pinellas County!)

The only Breeders’ Cup event I’ve ever attended was in 2017 at beautiful Del Mar. It was a really fun couple of days, and I can tell you that being on track and talking to lots of media folks and handicappers, I got swayed off of basically every opinion I had going into the week. I talked about this a fair bit on today’s episode of the Jason Beem podcast. 

I really believe that as horseplayers we have to be nimble. The situations of a given race, or sequence of races, can change on a dime whether it’s a late scratch or surface change or track bias or whatever. We can’t be married to our selections just because we liked them a few hours ago.

However, we also can’t fall for hype. That’s what happened to me in 2017. I was on track each morning and talked to as many people as I could, and all of them liked some other horse that I didn’t. I don’t know what it is, but for gullible people like me, it always seems as though we should listen to other people because clearly they must know more than us. I’m aware I’m not that smart and not that informed, so I think I sometimes overly trust others who have better opinions than me. Often that is a good thing. But I do believe when it comes to the handicapping part of racing, a lot of the fun is doing the work and coming to our own decision.

This week, if you’re someone who takes in racing content and social media, you’re going to be bombarded with information. For me, it’s fun to follow along with some of it, but it’s also necessary to tune out all the noise that you might hear. That includes things you’ll hear from me. I want my shows to be fun and interesting, but you’re not going to get some great information or selections. I just want to talk about the races like the fan I am and hopefully be entertaining.

Breeders’ Cup week, like the Kentucky Derby, fills me with nostalgia. I think we all have our favorite races and host sites and scores, and each time this week comes around I think about those past events. Maybe I'll write a little bit on Friday about some of my favorite moments from the Breeders’ Cup over the years, which I believe will turn 40 next year, correct? 

I feel like every year has something remarkably memorable happen, and I’m sure if I looked back to most years there are races I wouldn’t remember at all. But something super interesting will happen this weekend. Some crazy upset will happen at some point. Some horse we thought couldn’t lose will taste defeat. When you gather all the best horses in the world together, some amazing and crazy things will happen. Should be a fun week leading up to it!