Inside Track 1999

Anita Scialli

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this is. It seems as if it might be a periodical of some sort, but it looks, and is priced, like a book. I'm also wondering who it's aimed at. Most of the text seems as if it's for horse racing neophytes, but there's a section on wagering strategy and track bias that will likely not make sense to anyone who's not read at least three or four handicapping books.

Whatever it is, it seems to want to justify its somewhat exorbitant cover price with its bulk (it's roughly half the size of Playbill for a play with a sizable cast). It starts off somewhat promising as a basic horses 101 kind of thing, with quick discussions of the triple crown and Breeders' Cup races, after which comes that odd betting and bias bit. That covers about twenty-five pages, all told. After that comes a rundown of the year's Triple Crown contenders (in the book's only really ironic moment, Scialli talks in the into to this section about hos sometimes horses no one's heard of show up in triple crown races, and how rarely they win; absent from her list of contenders for 1999 is Charismatic, who ended up missing the whole triple crown by three strides after breaking his leg), which fills up much of the rest of the book's bulk. Afterwards comes a "wagering journal," which is Cormorant Publications-speak for "you just paid ten cents per blank page on that, buddy."

I've seen worse-structured racing books before, though I can't remember any offhand, and racing books that were worse put-together, one of which I reviewed just last week, but this is a combination of the two that will, hopefully, remain unique.