Noted Handicapping Author Tom Ainslie Dies at 89

Plus Some Corrections and Refinements to My Weighted Rankings

A Column by Steve Davidowitz
September 12, 2007

When Tom Ainslie passed away at age 89 last week, it became obvious to those who knew him that he was a virtual unknown outside American racing circles. Moreover, too many American horseplayers had no clue who he was or what he did to advance the art of handicapping.

Ainslie's real name was Richard Carter. Among other things, he was a highly respected medical writer and an award-winning investigative journalist who took his passion for handicapping into print.

In 1951, Carter won a prestigious journalism award for a series he wrote about racketeering on New York's waterfront while he was a reporter for a critically acclaimed weekly magazine, The New York Compass. A few years later he collaborated with William J. Keating, a high-profile former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, to write The Man Who Rocked the Boat, a memoir relating the prosecution of waterfront crime that became the basis for a hard-hitting classic movie, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.

Carter's medical writings include Breakthrough, an important biography of Dr. Jonas Salk, the man who discovered the vaccine for polio, and The Doctor Business, a controversial view of the powerful American Medical Association. Shifting his focus sharply, Carter collaborated with major league baseball player Curt Flood on the latter's memoir, The Way It Is, published in 1971. The book spelled out Flood's courageous challenge to the owners of America's major league baseball teams, a challenge that went all the way to the American Supreme Court and cost Flood his career, that opened the door for modern baseball players to bargain for their contracts as free agents.

Between these books and his freelance assignments, Carter became Tom Ainslie - the skilled amateur handicapper who loved to go to Aqueduct Racetrack in New York City and battle the parimutuels.

But, just as Ainslie loved to play the game, he also loved to discuss - make that argue - the finer points of horse racing with anyone who had a stimulating point of view.

Ainslie, the journalist, the communicator, the gifted writer, believed he had a handicapping book to contribute. He was, however, basically alone in this view as one publishing house after another rejected his proposals, including one that came back to him with the dismissive statement: “There is no market for this book because Horseplayers can't read!”

Yet Ainslie's Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing was finally published by Trident Press in 1968 and the material was audacious if not revolutionary. Far from being forgotten, Ainslie's book attracted interest from Daily Racing Form, who decided to give the author a column to expound on his handicapping ideas. Within months, Ainslie's Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing became one of the bestselling books on wagering in the pre-poker era.

Of course, Ainslie wasn't the first to write a good book on horse race handicapping. Before Ainslie was born in 1918, the successful 19th century horseplayer Pittsburgh Phil wrote his famous Maxims of Pittsburgh Phil, which roughly outlined the value of measuring the speed of each horse and its special distance and track preferences. During the 1920's, 30's and 40's, notable contributions were made by forgotten authors, including Robert Sanders Dowst, who sold very few books while sharing valid notions about consistency and class in the Thoroughbred racehorse.

Ainslie was, however, the first author to treat horse race handicapping as an intellectually challenging, intellectually satisfying pursuit. He was the first to cover all of the elements.

Ainslie's Complete Guide discussed how speed, pace, class, distance, racing surfaces, trainers and jockeys could be integrated into a cogent analytical approach. His work educated a large army of horseplayers while it inspired some of us who were in the early stages of our writing and handicapping careers.

I met Tom Ainslie for the first time in 1972, when he had already become the ‘Charles Goren of Horse Race Handicapping.’ The comparison is valid. Goren - an internationally famous bridge expert - wrote fundamentally sound books in the 1950's and 60's that became the fountainhead for all subsequent works on basic bridge strategy.

I met Ainslie because we had both been brought in to do a handicapping seminar at the Holiday Inn in Laurel, Maryland. The gathering was sponsored by the same people who were sponsoring my five-minute daily radio show, ‘Handicapping Hints and Spot Selections.’

I had been writing about racing for less than a year. I had come off the road, was now married with a one-year-old son and recently had been hired as senior editor of Turf and Sport Digest Magazine in Baltimore. The meeting had been arranged by Bobby Abbo, owner of a great sports bar/restaurant in Washington, D.C., who put me on the air with his own money until the Holiday Inn decided to pick up the option for two years.

I was exceedingly nervous about this meeting, just as I had been when I met the great baseball pitcher Warren Spahn when I was a 17-year-old left-handed pitching prospect in Bayonne, New Jersey. I was nervous at the Holiday Inn in rural Laurel because I was going to do a seminar with the great Tom Ainslie.

This was going to be my first handicapping seminar ever.

With Tom Ainslie??? Are you kidding me???

Ainslie was so gracious and accommodating, so supportive, that my first seminar still ranks as one of the easiest of my life. More than that, the author of the great fundamental handicapping book took me aside afterwards and said that the ideas I was expressing - about Track Bias, Key Races and Trainer Patterns - deserved to be in a book of its own.

He wasn't just being nice, or gracious. Ainslie was always open to new ideas and was a staunch believer in teaching the intricacies of the game. Two weeks after the joint seminar, he even sent me a letter signed with his real name, Dick Carter, a letter that said:

“Steve, I meant what I told you. You should write a handicapping book of your own… . If you can't find a publisher, don't be discouraged; I will help you get one.”

While I didn't feel quite ready to follow Ainslie's advice and my good friend Andrew Beyer beat me into print with many of the ideas I had taught him, Ainslie persisted with his suggestion the following year and contacted an agent on my behalf.

That was Tom Ainslie in his prime, a man who valued the game and the ideas he encountered more than his own ego, more than most.

Through the years that followed, we remained in periodic contact. I visited him in his home on the Hudson River in Ossining, New York in 1996 when his wife was still alive, and we talked by phone a few times each year until I lost track of him, just as most of his friends did in his declining years.

At the bottom line, Dick Carter / Tom Ainslie may have passed on this week, but he is the charter member of the unofficial Hall of Fame for Handicapping writers; he is an immortal, a man with a legacy who should never be forgotten. Not by horseplayers and certainly not by those he helped on a personal and professional level. If I may add, he wrote more than one important handicapping book and should you wish to acquaint yourself with his work, try the Las Vegas-based Gambler's Book Shop at www.gamblersbook.com.

Regarding my up-to-date weighted ratings published in this space last week, there was one semi-duplication that may have caused some confusion. It is resolved below:

Milers on the turf, three years old and up (first combined ratings of 2007; 16 rated, including two 3-year-olds):

Crossing The Line (127); The Tin Man (123); Shakis (122); Kip Deville (122); Art Master (121); Wait a While, mare (118); My Typhoon, mare (118); Remarkable News (117); Lady of Venice, filly (117); Therecomesatiger (117); Nobiz Like Shobiz, 3-yr-old (115); Price Tag, filly (116); Precious Kitten, filly (116); Karen's Caper, filly (116); Icy Atlantic (114); Twilight Meteor, 3-yr-old (113).

Notes: Crossing the Line was an awesome, fast finishing winner of the $400,000 Del Mar Mile (G2) on August 19th. Yet his connections are balking at running him in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Mile, because he will only be made eligible with the payment of a $400,000 late nomination fee… Art Master turned in a very strong performance to win the $100,000 Poker Handicap (G3) over Woodlander at one mile on the Belmont turf on July 14… . Lady of Venice won the $1 million CashCall Mile on July 6th… . Precious Kitten won the $250,000 Palomar Handicap (G2) at Del Mar on September 1st and her versatile stablemate Price Tag probably needs more distance, although she was third in the Cash Call Mile.

Next week: An evaluation of Rags to Riches' level of fitness after she runs in the $250,000 Gazelle - her first race since winning the Belmont Stakes in June. Plus, a review of recent turf stakes and other Breeders' Cup prep races in New York.

Steve Davidowitz has written two highly acclaimed books on Thoroughbred racing---Betting Thoroughbreds and The Best and Worst of Thoroughbred Racing. He also is a regular contributor to Daily Racing Form's Simulcast Weekly and DRF Plus and his columns appear in the Bodog Racebook each week.