For the first time in nearly two full days of contest play, Lawrence Kahlden was suddenly feeling a sense of dread.

Even before the $250,000 Pick & Pray Classic had begun, Kahlden — a 64-year-old retired CEO of a company that operated a chain of 70 pawn shops — thought the array of races from Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Laurel and Tampa Bay Downs might yield some really nice plays. Those thoughts were confirmed at the end of Day 1 on Saturday when four winners (all paying at least $16.60) and another four runners up had him leading the field of 191…albeit by a mere 24 cents.

Kahlden, the fourth-place finisher in the 2024 NHC, had played in enough contests to know that things could turn on a dime against him…that one uncovered cap horse could knock him way down in the standings. Still, when he began handicapping the Day 2 races on Sunday morning, he saw even more horses that he really liked, and those positive feelings were even stronger now.

“I’m seeing it,” he told himself. “I’m seeing it good. I could win this [thing].”

The St. Petersburg, Fla., resident wasn’t wrong. Over the first six of the 20 Sunday races, Kahlden caught fire, nailing three $20.00+ winners.

“Are you kidding me?!” he said jubilantly to his wife Gloria after the third of his early Sunday winners had put him up by more than $52.00. At that point, Lawrence was pinching himself. What a weekend!

With one race to go, however, the lead was down to a hardly-insurmountable $22.68. The final race was the 11th at Gulfstream, a tough maiden event on the turf. That morning, Kahlden had initially narrowed the race down to the 3, 5 and 12. Further scrutiny eliminated the 3 from his consideration. Then, after much back and forth, he opted for the 12 horse, Munnings Talks (12-1 ML), a first time starter that fit one of his favorite angles (“A mare that drops babies that win first time out.”). He decided to pass on #5 Squander, an 8-1 ML Todd Pletcher trainee than had gone off at 3-1 in her lone previous start.

As post time neared, though, Kahlden didn’t like what he was seeing. He scanned the leaderboard and saw that Squander was being dismissed at 18-1 and was one of two horses in the race that could beat him in the contest. Even worse, there were no fewer than four different players on Squander who within range of him.

Suddenly the previous 36 or so hours seemed too good to be true.

“I’m going to be happy for two days, thinking I’m going to win $90,000, and I’m going to wind up with $12,000,” he said to himself.

It was time to employ a few safeguards.

Safeguard #1 was to bet $500 to win and place on Squander—not to get the odds down (the horse still went off at 18-1) — but as some measure of sanity insurance after liking the horse that morning.

“I was looking for a hedge,” Kahlden admitted.

Safeguard #2 had more to do with the supernatural.

Kahlden readily admits to being superstitious. In his younger days, when he was an avid sports bettor, nothing would drive him nuts more than watching a football game with friends and having someone tell him “You got this won!” or “It’s in the bag!” before the game had ended. Such proclamations would seemingly always lead to improbable turnovers or Hail Mary completions that turned his winning tickets into drink coasters.

It turns out that Gloria has a healthy respect for superstition as well. She, too, prefers not to risk offending the gambling gods. 

Throughout the Pick & Pray Classic, she and Lawrence had both noticed that almost of his winners had come when she was not watching the race with him. So as the horses began to load for this decisive 11th at Gulfstream, Gloria waited in a nearby room, barely allowing herself the liberty to peek out and around the corner as she awaited her husband’s reaction.

For Lawrence, though, there was one more step to take.

“It was all very stressful. I was walking in circles around my coffee table,” he said. “Several friends had been following the contest, texting me during the day, and I knew that my TV feed was about a minute behind the Gulfstream feed on my laptop. I didn’t want texts to give away the result before I had actually seen it for myself. So I placed my laptop on top of my TV and watched the race that way.”

For the longest time, Gloria (who also played in the Pick & Pray Classic and finished a plenty respectable 88th) heard nothing but silence from the other room. Squander had broken slowly, but she started picking off horses one by one around the final turn of the one-mile grass race. Lawrence’s heart was in his throat. But then, during the stretch run, just enough traffic materialized for Squander’s furious rally under Samy Camacho to fall short. She finished fifth, beaten just a length and a quarter.

Suddenly, Gloria heard hooting and hollering. The $90,000 grand prize was theirs!

“We started jumping up and down and high-fiving,” Lawrence recalled.

In addition to the $90,000, Lawrence earned an extra $6,250 for having the top overall score on Saturday. What will he and Gloria do with the windfall?

“Pay off some horse debt!” he laughed.

Lawrence has been around horses for most of his life. His father Lawrence Sr. — a guard and defensive tackle on the 1958 L.S.U. national champion football team — owned, trained and bred Quarterhorses.

On weekends, he would take young Lawrence to Louisiana bush tracks, not far from their home in Shreveport. Later, Dad shifted over to Thoroughbreds and 14-year-old Lawrence would make bets from a couple of windows in the Louisiana Downs track kitchen—where age restrictions were, ahem, not readily adhered to.

“I won a lot of bets early on, and I thought it was easy,” he said with a smile. “At that point, I was hooked.”

Years later, when Lawrence Jr. met with success in the business world, he followed in his father’s footsteps and began owning and breeding Thoroughbreds—an avocation that continues to this day.

He and another decorated contest player, NHC Hall of Famer Brett Wiener, own two mares together, and they race the babies in partnership. Last month, they had a Stay Thirsty filly break her maiden at Del Mar.

The filly’s name is doubly appropriate—Final Table Lady. It references the fact that both Gloria (in 2018) and Wiener’s wire Sarah (in 2021) managed to reach the NHC Final Table. 

Perhaps Lawrence will need to fill out an “Owner Declaration” form in March should Final Table Lady run during the next NHC in March. He’ll be there playing two entries. It took him all the way until the end of April for him to land those!

As for Gloria, she largely confines her contest play to cash games these days. She’ll likely be at the NHC too, though. She’ll be close to Lawrence…just maybe not too close…not like in the photo below.

She wouldn’t want to jinx him, you know.