Prior to “Picking Winners” and speed figures becoming fashionable, handicappers had to rely on a track variant in the Morning Telegraph, aka the now defunct “The Telly,” or Daily Racing Form which consisted of an overly simplistic system based on track records at different distances. “I think it’s fair to say horse racing did not have any recognized objective measurements of horses’ performances before them,” Beyer said. People produced and sold speed figures before the publishing of “Picking Winners” but it was Beyer who introduced them to a mass audience and documented the necessity for them. The book featured chapters of Beyer’s brilliant prose, but at the heart of it were the pages that created a relatively new concept in racing. I still have it and when I look through now it is amazing to me how many things in that book still play a role in my handicapping.” “Andy wrote ‘Picking Winners’ at the time when I discovered racing,” Serling said. More than 40 years later, “Picking Winners” is just as effective and educational for handicappers as it was when it first landed at bookstores in the 1970s and remains remarkable for the army of new handicappers it has spawned over the years. I can’t imagine what the game would be like without him and the way he made it better for so many people like myself.”Īs much as Beyer was a powerful voice in the industry as a writer and columnist for nearly 50 years for the Washington Post and the Washington Daily News, his most important contribution to the sport of racing and its fans came in 1975 when he authored the groundbreaking book “Picking Winners” that revolutionized handicapping. “Andy Beyer wrote a book that changed the game like no one else,” said New York Racing Association handicapper and analyst Andy Serling. Some people may have won more money wagering on the races than Beyer, but no other person has enjoyed as profound and prolonged of an impact on the art of handicapping as the 79-year-old graduate of Harvard University. If there was a Mount Rushmore for horse racing handicappers, it’s an odds-on proposition that the first face on it would belong to Andy Beyer.
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