Horse Racing Nation is highlighting readers’ best betting days at the races -- how they chased the big score and cashed in -- with this new weekly feature. Let us know about your big hit here.
Cashing a winning ticket at the racetrack is nice, as is winning from the comfort of home. But California resident John Lally topped that in epic fashion when bringing down an $11,000 Pick 5 from Las Vegas, where he had to borrow $300 from a sibling just to make the bet.
Some astute handicapping turned around what was an otherwise tough trip, with Vegas the destination for a friend’s 50th birthday party. Lally, however, didn’t want to tell his wife he’d burned through his bankroll. “I reached out to my sister and told her I was in Vegas and blew through what I had,” he said. “I asked her to send me a couple hundred bucks. “...I had about an hour between the time she sent the money and the late Pick 4 at Saratoga. Out of the $300, I think I spent about $120 on that. I got lucky. I hit it. I got back $750. And I would have been happy with just that.” The July 22, 2018, sequence was headlined by Monomoy Girl’s victory in the Coaching Club of American Oaks (G1). Lally decided to let some of his winnings ride on his way to a lifetime-best score. “I’m feeling on a roll here, so let’s see what I can do at Del Mar,” he though. “By the time the Saratoga Pick 4 had ended it was probably the third or fourth race at Del Mar, and I decided to handicap the late Pick 5.”
Lally was keeping up with his ticket while walking to various Vegas casinos with his wife and friends, stopping off at sports books to see the next race. The third leg represented his single. Mother Mother, a firster for the Bob Baffert barn, delivered for him, leaving the ticket alive with five horses in the fourth leg and four more in the payoff race. Lally caught another longshot as Drayden Van Dyke hit the wire with 21-1 Catapult in the Eddie Read Stakes (G2). Although Lally had the race favorite Sharp Samurai on his ticket, he wasn’t all too fond of a horse that wound up second by a neck to the winner. “The reason I liked (Catapult) is that in his previous race he got into some trouble,” Lally said. “I think he steadied around the eighth or sixteenth pole, but was coming on a bit at the end. I threw him in there because I didn’t really care for the favorite too much.” Given a pair of high-priced winners, Lally knew he was sitting on a big potential payout, and it would have been larger had a horse other than the race favorite delivered in the finale. However, it still amounted to an $11,363 turnaround in Sin City. “I’ve had big days before where I won a compilation of bets,” Lally said, “but this was by far the biggest single ticket hit I’ve ever had in my life.”
