Bodine cruises to second straight truck victory

Autoracing Betting Lines

08/14/2010 - Darlington, SC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Todd Bodine picked up his second win in a row in the Camping World Truck Series by taking Saturday's Too Tough To Tame 200 at Darlington Raceway.

Bodine, who won last week at Nashville, led the final 47 laps and held off Timothy Peters by a half-second for his third victory of the season and the 20th of his truck career.

"That was no Sunday drive, but I knew I had to go with Timothy behind me," Bodine said.

The series competed at Darlington for the first time since November 2004. Bodine won a Nationwide race here in 2003.

Bodine increased his lead to 231 points over Aric Almirola, who finished ninth. Ten races remain in the season.

"We got it going on," said Bodine, the 2006 Truck Series champion. "We struggled at the beginning of the year, but [crew chief] Mike Hillman Jr. has changed it around, and here we are. We're getting faster every week. It's nice to be able to get some wins and drive this way."

Peters started on the pole and led the first 47 laps before letting Ron Hornaday Jr. take the top position away from him during the first round of pit stops.

"With that last set of sticker [tires] we took, we were just mired back in traffic a little bit, so I had to use up my stuff early just to get the clean air and get back to the front."

Hornaday Jr. ended up third, while Johnny Sauter and rookie Austin Dillon rounded out the top-five.

Matt Crafton finished sixth, followed by James Buescher and Stacy Compton.

Long-time NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader took the 10th spot.

The 200-mile truck race at Darlington featured nine cautions, mostly for crashes.

On lap 96, Mario Gosselin got loose and hit the wall. Gosselin then slid down the track and clipped Ricky Carmichael. Both drivers slammed hard into the wall. It was the second week in a row that Gosselin was involved in a heavy crash.

A three-truck wreck occurred on lap 106 when Justin Lofton made contact with the wall and collected David Starr. Lofton then rammed into the side of Mike Skinner.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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