Zenyatta and Blame top thoroughbred poll

Horseracing Betting Lines

08/16/2010 - New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Champion mare Zenyatta and Whitney champ Blame continue to lead the NTRA National Thoroughbred Poll. The top five positions remain unchanged from last week.

Zenyatta, perfect this year in four starts, again received 14 first-place votes, but saw her total points fall from 181 to 174. On Saturday, August 7 the six-year-old mare won the Clement L. Hirsch Stakes at Del Mar for the third straight year. The two-time Eclipse Award winner may make her next start at Santa Anita Park in the renamed Zenyatta Stakes,

Four-year-old colt Blame had moved into second after winning the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga on August 7. This week he again garnered four top votes and added two points over last week to total 160. His next start is expected to be the Jockey Club Gold Cup in October.

Quality Road, second in the Whitney, is third with 133 points followed by Haskell winner Lookin At Lucky with 121 points and 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra with 116 points.

Eclipse Award winner Gio Ponti moved into sixth from the seventh spot with 48 points. The 2009 champion turf and older male will defend his title in this Saturday's Arlington Million.

Three-year-old filly Blind Luck received 42 points to advance one rung to seventh. She will start in Saturday's Alabama Stakes at Saratoga.

Devil May Care, who will also start in the Alabama, dropped from sixth to eighth with 40 points.

Five-year-old mare Proviso posted 28 points to remain ninth in the poll. She has won three of four starts this year.

Rail Trip, second in this year's Hollywood Gold Cup, is back in the top 10 with 27 points. The five-year-old gelding won the Mervyn LeRoy Handicap and the Californian Stakes this year.

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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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