Approaching witching hour, Odds On Mr Mamba serves notice in sophomore debut
A likely match-up with reigning Horse of the Year Beau Jangles in the Pepsi North America Cup is becoming increasingly enticing.
by Brett Sturman
If you happened to miss the live 3-year-old debut of Odds On Mr Mamba from this past Monday (May 25) at Harrah’s Hoosier Park, you’re in good company and with good reason. Racing in the 15th and final race to conclude the long U.S. three-day holiday weekend, Odds On Mr Mamba didn’t go post-ward until 11:34 local time (EST).
It’s not the time of night you would expect for the Indiana world champion who returned as the fastest 2-year-old pacer of all-time last year and perhaps the best chance to defeat Canada’s Beau Jangles, but that’s how the circumstances played out in leading to the oddity.
At the root of the race placement was logistics around Odds On Mamba’s driver, Dexter Dunn. Dunn, who drove the record 2-year-old to his final four wins to close out last year and who will remain his pilot this year, had stakes commitments the same day at Oak Grove.
To accommodate, the race was to be placed later in the card, though just how late was a function of field sizes throughout all the Indiana Sires Stake races. As vice president/general manager of racing Gabe Prewitt explained to me that the Indiana Sires Stakes rules require split races whenever a field size reaches 11 (something Prewitt is not a fan of), which then not only necessitate more races but also more races with smaller fields, which limits full-size fields needed for the Hi-5 wager. As a result, it left races 7 and 15 as the only possibilities for Odds On Mr Mamba, so with Dunn coming from 300 miles away nearing the same time the Hoosier card was about to begin, race 15 it was.
While certainly unusual and non-traditional to have the feature horse in the feature race go last, it was mainly harmless in this case the more I thought about it. Sure, it would have been nice to have the race take place at a time where more people could have been awake, including yours truly, but in the end, there’s really nothing tangible about where the race was placed.
If this were a long time ago and the track was expecting a crowd of 30,000 people to come see the return of a 1:47.4 2-year-old in a sires stakes race to conclude their Memorial Day holiday, then of course, the race would have to be placed in more of a prominent slot. Prewitt did note to me however that the track’s signature events such as the Dan Patch and the Caesar’s Trotting Classic do go late as well, so it’s not like Odds On Mr Mamba going late in the card would have been necessarily different, but ideally it would have gone in the race 12 or 13 range if it had been possible.
Despite going off late in the night as the Hoosier finales do, and having a prohibitive 1-9 favorite, handle on the race was very strong relative to the other races throughout the card. The win pool of over $23,000 was the highest of the night, and the exacta pool of over $15,300 was the third highest exacta pool of the night, just less than $2,000 off the top one for the card. In addition to place wagering, credit to Prewitt for keeping show wagering open for the race, which generated another $13,195. And factoring in all other race pools credited to the final race 15, the total race pool was $131,726.
As for the race itself, it probably couldn’t have gone any better for Odds On Mr Mamba’s first start back and as a potential tune up for major things to come in two weeks. Returning off three winning qualifiers, he settled away into the fourth position after beginning from post 2, where Dunn and Odds On Mr Mamba sat comfortably while honest fractions of :26.2 and :54.2 were set on the front end. Once past the half, Odds On Mr Mamba was brought to the outside where he advanced steadily, wrested control in the stretch, and was a smooth looking winner clear by a couple of lengths, stopping the clock in 1:49 flat with a last quarter of :26.3.
Two days before Odds On Mr Mamba returned with his 1:49 win, it was the reigning Horse of the Year Beau Jangles last Saturday (May 23) who made it three-for-three to begin his sophomore campaign by once again crushing overmatched Ontario-sired rivals at Woodbine Mohawk Park. It sets the stage for a showdown of epic proportions where these two record holders could potentially clash first in the North America Cup eliminations two weeks from now on June 6. For all the talk of how Beau Jangles is yet to race outside of Ontario, the same could be true for Odds On Mr Mamba and Hoosier Park. It will be interesting to see what happens in the North America Cup, and then later down the line in stakes such as the Meadowlands Pace, which would be on a true, neutral setting.
Should these stars meet in either two weeks for the North America Cup eliminations or in three weeks for the North America Cup final, viewership will be massive no matter where in the race card it is or the time of night it falls under.
