Andy Harrington Workout Reports

[Midnight Cruiser]

A buddy of mine has used these in the past and had some good success? Anyone care to share the good and the bad?

[pandy]

Harrington is very good, the best I've seen. I used the report for a few years and I had some success with it but it's like a lot of other handicapping angles, runs hot and cold. In other words, some times B or higher ranked works win and pay well for a certain period of time and then suddenly they don't. So you have to use it as factor along with whatever else you do.

One problem with these workout reports is that there are several of them available for So.Cal. so a lot of bettors have the info and this results in a lot of first time starters getting over bet (and losing), and also the good working horses don't pay as well as they used to. Years ago when he first started the report he would list horses with B or higher ranking that would win and pay $30 to $40, now too many people have the info and the pools are smaller so the odds are lower.

Horses that work well don't always win. If you try it, and you're a pick 3 or 4 bettor, or any exotics, I'd recommend using his B or better horses that go off as longshots, say 6-1 or higher, in maiden races. Be careful in the races for winners, especially in allowance and stakes races. These horses tend to work well but it doesn't really mean anything. For instance, TVG shows "The Works" before the Breeders Cup but although it may seem interesting to watch, the works for the Cup are not that important because all of the horses look good on the track in the morning.

Also keep in mind that just because a horse gets a weak ranking, such as a C, or C+ for a fast workout, doesn't mean that the horse won't benefit from the workout. Sheriffs, who usually works his horses slow, put two fast works into Giacomo before the Derby and the clockers gave Giacomo's fast works low rankings but I felt that the trainer was trying to put some speed into the colt and that he was ready for a big race, so in my picks that year I put Giacomo 5th and said that he may get into the exotics at a price (although I didn't think he'd win). The point is, the clockers didn't like his works but they did what they were intended to do.

[Fingal]

Here's an article comparing National Turf to Handicapper's report using last year's BC as examples.

http://socalspecial.com/61/handicappers-report-versus-national-turf/

Personally, I've used both at times & I'd say that Handicapper's Report is more...selective in the horses they cover. National Turf talks about almost if not everyone in the race & to me that's a negative. Afterwards they may advertise that Harrington had the $20 winner as a B rating, but when most of that field got a B or B+, IMO that's more confusing than helpful.

Both have samples available-

National Turf usually has a recent sheet under samples
https://secure.nationalturf.com/workouts/sample.html

HR Report you can find on the Del Mar website. The nice thing is that there's a calendar so you can choose which day you want to go back to.
http://www.dmtc.com/handicapping/hreport/

And when the horses are at SA looking under handicapping on the SA website, they are an option too.

Of course they have their own website & various samples.
http://www.hreport.com/