“People ask me all the time, how do you win so many races?” said Rachel Alexandra’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, who’s had 256 first-place finishes this year. “Do you know how many races I lose? That’s how you win that many, you lose that many. I went 0-for-18 last Saturday, had a 2-5 shot in a stakes, she got beat a nose. I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Asmussen recently said to me.  So, today, people will lump their money on Mine That Bird or, thinking back to Da’ Tara, one of the horses with longer odds. They’ll think they can predict the mindset and the ability of a living, breathing creature that sleeps standing up and can die of a stomachache.  People ask me, “What are horses like?” It’s taken me a lifetime of riding, training, writing and betting to finally home in on an answer.  Horses are just like people; there are smart ones, dumb ones, miserable ones, honest ones, simple ones, cheats, freaks, leaders and laggards. They have good days, bad days and plenty of average days. They can be brilliant one minute, horrible the next. They can remember something that happened a year ago and forget what they learned yesterday. They’ll walk placidly into a metal starting gate that clangs and rings when the doors open, and then be scared of a bucket that wasn’t there yesterday.  And we think we know what’s going to happen this afternoon.  Sean Clancy, a former steeplechase jockey, is an editor and publisher of The Saratoga Special and The Steeplechase Times newspapers.  A version of this op-ed appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Horse Sense. Today's Paper|Subscribe
The thing about thoroughbred horse racing is that nobody knows what’s going to happen today or any day. That’s part of the deal.