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There are a lot of thankless jobs in horse racing—outrider, groom, hotwalker come to mind—but few of them are as open to public scrutiny as the morning-line oddsmaker.

The work of the morning-line oddsmaker is visible daily, its correctness able to be assessed by anyone interested enough to pay attention. And while a sharp morning line is seldom the subject of commentary, the linemaker who gets it wrong also gets an earful.

David Aragona became the oddsmaker for New York Racing Association about a year ago, following a stint as a handicapper at Timeform US, now owned by the Daily Racing Form. He started going to the races when he was in primary school, taken there by his father and his uncle.

'My father had all these VHS tapes of the Breeders' Cup and the Kentucky Derby,' he recalled, 'and I'd watch them and educate myself. I knew all the great horses, like Secretariat and Forego.'

A regular handicapper as a teenager growing up in northern New Jersey, racing took a back seat to education when he attended New York University, majoring in computer science and music. After graduation, he started a blog as a side project, posting race analysis and articles.

'The blog developed a little bit of a following through Twitter, and I made some connections,' said Aragona. 'Marc Attenberg at Timeform reached out to me in early 2015 as a kind of informal consultant, and that led to my working with them on a part-time basis. After DRF purchased Timeform, I started working for them full time.'

In addition to making the morning line, Aragona does analysis of NYRA races and major national races for Timeform, along with video analysis for NYRA and DRF. He also makes regular appearances on Talking Horses, NYRA's in-house handicapping show.

Aragona made Tacitus the 9-5 morning-line favorite for the Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1), with Preakness Stakes (G1) winner just behind him at 2-1. He acknowledged making the morning line for the Belmont is not exactly the same as making it for a $40,000 claimer on a Wednesday afternoon.

'With the Belmont, you get a bit of an opportunity to weigh public opinion more than you usually do,' he said. 'I can log on to social media to see what people are saying and what direction they're leaning. Without that, I probably wouldn't have made Tacitus the favorite, given that War of Will won the Preakness and Tacitus lost the Kentucky Derby (presented by Woodford Reserve [G1]), but so many people are picking Tacitus, and everybody seems convinced that he's the horse that will relish the Belmont distance.'

When he first started the job, he kept sedulous track of his work, comparing his work to the post-time odds, and what he found was a pleasant surprise.

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'I was generally pretty close, and I exceeded my own expectations,' he said. 'I don't track as closely anymore.'

He often has to wear two hats when he's assessing a card: his linemaker hat, assessing how he thinks the public will bet; and his handicapper hat, assessing which horse he thinks will win.

'I generally do the morning line first,' he said, 'then put it aside for a little while and come to handicap with a different set of eyes.'

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And while he generally finds it relatively easy to ignore the social media critics, he will mute people that start slinging mud.

'That's not my style,' he said. 'I don't block people a lot. And when someone whose opinion I respect has a criticism, I take notice.

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'It's easy to do a pretty good job when the racing is straightforward, especially at Aqueduct,' he continued. 'It's a lot more complicated when you have turf racing and first-time starters and 2-year-olds at Belmont and especially at Saratoga. I try to mirror the betting odds, but sometimes it's just impossible.'