Rachel Alexandra highlights Personal Ensign Stakes

Horseracing Betting Lines

08/26/2010 - Saratoga Springs, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Rachel Alexandra, 2009 Horse of the Year, gets back into action Sunday in the $300,000 Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. The four-year-old filly will take on four female challengers in the 1 1/4-mile race, her first attempt at the distance.

"Rachel feels very much at home among the great Saratoga fans," said co-owner, Jess Jackson when he announced that the filly would start in the Personal Ensign. "It's an historic race, named after a great champion. The timing is right for Rachel. She's been coming back into her stride and this will help her prepare for the rest of her campaign and the Breeders' Cup later this year."

Last year at Saratoga, Rachel defeated older male horses in the 1 1/8- mile Woodward Stakes.

Rachel Alexandra, trained by Steve Asmussen, will again be ridden by Calvin Borel and the pair will break from post two in the five horse field. Borel has been the champion's only race rider the last 13 starts.

The champion filly won the $400,000 Lady's Secret Stakes at Monmouth Park on July 24 in her most recent start. This year she has won two of four races, including her last two, for $498,376. In her career she has earned nearly $3.5 million with 13 wins in 18 starts.

While Rachel is expected to be a heavy favorite on Sunday, she will face formidable opposition.

Delaware Handicap winner Life At Ten should prove to be a difficult mare with which to contend. The five-year-old, like Rachel, is a speed horse who went wire-to-wire last time out at Delaware Park.

Trained by Todd Pletcher, Life At Ten will be ridden by John Velazquez from post four. The chestnut mare, owned by Candy DeBartolo, is undefeated this year in four starts. In addition to the Del 'Cap, Life At Ten has won the Ogden Phipps, Sixty Sails and Rare Treat Stakes. In her career she has won seven of 14 starts for $909,267.

"She's in very good form right now, and she's obviously on a winning streak," Pletcher noted. "I think her races this year have been better than some have given her credit for, but I also think it's a very, very tall order to take on Rachel Alexandra."

Here is the complete field for the Personal Ensign in post position order: Miss Singhsix, Jose Valdivia, Jr.; Rachel Alexandra, Calvin Borel; Persistently, Alan Garcia; Life At Ten, John Velazquez and Classofsixtythree, Javier Castellano.

The Personal Ensign has a scheduled post-time of 6 p.m. (et).

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

NFL Betting Lines

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