Participant Biographies

Youbet.com has gathered some of the biggest names in the industry to help you identify the best value on the road to the biggest races of the year.

ANDREW BEYER The longtime racing columnist for The Washing-ton Post, still contributes occasionally to that newspaper and to Daily Racing Form while continuing to play the races from Gulfstream Park, Del Mar, and more from the den of his Washington, D.C., home. Beyer is perhaps best known as the creator of the Beyer Speed Figures and continues to supervise the team that creates those ratings, which debuted in print in The Racing Times in 1990 and have appeared in Daily Racing Form since 1992. His first book, Picking Winners, outlined his development of the speed-figure methodology. He is also the author of My $50,000 Year at the Races, The Winning Horseplayer, and Beyer on Speed. STEVEN CRIST Mr. Crist continues as chairman and publisher of Daily Racing Form, which he rescued from a steep decline by assembling an investment group to purchase it in 1998. He also served as the company’s CEO from then until 2002, upgrading the paper’s journalistic and statistical offerings and launching the company’s book-publishing and online data-sales busi-nesses. Crist was the racing writer and columnist for The New York Times from 1981 through 1990, after which he was the founding editor of The Racing Times. He next served as a governmental appointee on the New York State Commission on the Future of Racing, and then as a vice presi-dent of the New York Racing Association from 1994 to 1997. He is the author of several books, including the memoir Betting on Myself and the handicapping book Exotic Betting. BRAD FREE Mr. Free is the author of the back-to-basics text Handicapping 101 and is the longtime Southern California handicapper for Daily Racing Form. Beyond writing just a daily analysis, Free is also a reporter and columnist for DRF and a regular contributor to DRF Simulcast Weekly. Prior to arriving at DRF in 1992, Free completed handicapping tours with the Pasadena Star-News, the daily sports newspaper The National, and The Racing Times. He is also the defending champion of the handicapping contest first laun-ched at the Horseplayers Expo at Paris Las Vegas, in 2004. DAN ILLMAN Mr. Illman is the drf.com handicapping editor and the author of Betting Maidens & 2-Year-Olds. Illman specializes in juvenile races, maidens, and turf races, and was a handicapper at Daily Racing Form until early 2006, when he moved exclusively to drf.com. Among other assignments, each summer he produces his “Spa Babies” column, a complete statistical analysis of each 2-year-old race at Saratoga. A frequent radio and TV guest, he is also the host of the DRF News Desk and often fills in on TVG’s Blinkers Off. ANDY SERLING Mr. Serling, a native of Saratoga Springs, New York, has been a familiar face and voice around New York tracks since he began following the races while still a child. As an adult, he has become known as a trenchant and highly opinionated analyst. He was the first co-host (with Mike Watchmaker) of the “Talkin’ Horses” segment of the NYRA simulcast show, and currently serves as a weekend-stakes commentator on drf.com webcasts. He is also a regular guest and the Monday host of Daily Racing Form’s handicapping seminars at Siro’s during the Saratoga race meeting. MIKE WATCHMAKER Mr. Watchmaker is the national handicapper for Daily Racing Form. He ranks the leaders in the nation’s stakes divisions weekly, and analyzes the major weekend events of the sport for the paper. He is also the co-host with TVG’s Matt Carothers of that station’s Friday-morning show Blinkers Off, where he provides an East Coast perspective and spars with Carothers on seemingly every topic of interest. In Bet with the Best, Watchmaker contributed a chapter on stakes races, providing a contemporary profile for evaluating the Triple Crown candidates. Watchmaker approaches a quarter-century of experience in Thoroughbred racing, mainly as an employee of DRF, which he joined in 1980. He had covered as many as 20 racetracks before becoming the New York correspondent. Watchmaker also worked for The Racing Times and for the New York Racing Association, and was named that circuit’s morning-line maker and official track-program handicapper in 1994. His speed figures appeared in the official NYRA track program and he was a co-host for NYRA’s daily Race Day program before leaving to rejoin DRF in 1998.