The Triple Crown horse races continue this month, and on the outcome of these three premier Thoroughbred races, Americans will wager hundreds of millions of dollars. But you can bet your Derby hat that the vast majority of those gamblers won’t know a furlong from a fetlock.
Let’s see how much equinese you know.
Let’s start with distances. When your horse wins by a length, you know what that means. But did you know that a win by a neck is precisely 30 percent of a win by a length; that a head is exactly 20 percent of a length; and that when one horse beats another by a nose, the winning distance is 5 percent of the horse’s length?
Beyond noses and necks, what about the horse’s other unique—or uniquely placed— body parts? Can we name those? Horses sometimes break a fetlock, which makes sense since it’s the equine joint that most resembles a human ankle. Horse’s elbows, meanwhile, are curiously located near the top rear of the front legs, above where the knee and forearm meet.
And then there’s the almost poetic trio of body parts named the dock, the hock and ergot. The first is the area where a horse’s tail and vertebrae meet; the second is the joint on the hind leg below the knee; and the latter is “a small, horny protuberance on the back of each of a horse’s fetlocks,” according to the Oxford dictionary. Know these, and you’ll know your horse.
Finally, even if you know nothing about horse parts or victory spans, it’s good for a Derby bettor to know something about … betting. Of course, you’ll make your win-place-show bets. But don’t forget to go where the real money is: exactas, trifectas and perfectas, as well as Pick 3, Pick 4 or more.
The exacta, trifecta and superfecta wagers are multiple-horse wagers—you choose two, three or four horses to finish in order in one race. A winning $1 Superfecta bet on the Derby this year would have made you $19,618 richer.
The Pick 3, Pick 4 or Pick 5 bets involve selecting winners of several different races on the same day at the same track. This year, a Texas woman accurately predicted the winner of the Derby, and the winners of the four races leading up to it at Churchill Downs. Her $18 bet netted her $1.2 million.
That’s a lot of cash—in equinese or any other language.
Neil Chethik, aka the Grammar Gourmet, is executive director of the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning (www.carnegiecenterlex.org) and author of “FatherLoss” and “VoiceMale.” The Carnegie Center offers writing classes and seminars for businesses and individuals. Contact Chethik at neil@carnegiecenterlex.org or 859-254-4175.