Plot of the Week 6

Yesterday, Union Rags won the 2012 Belmont Stakes.  For this week's edition of Plot of the Week, I wanted to look at the winning times at the Belmont Stakes (since 1926, when the current distance of 1.5 miles was established).

 The red circles designate that the betting favorite won, and the blue +'s show the horses that won the Triple Crown in that year.  The green and magenta lines show the average and median winning time, respectively.

Some interesting takeaways:

1. The record time is 144 seconds, run by Secretariat in 1973.  No horse has gotten within 2 seconds of this winning time.
2. There is an overall downward trend in time, although winning times seem to have leveled off in the past few decades.
3. There were 2 horses that won the Triple Crown but were not favorites at the Belmont Stakes.
4. The past 3 Belmont Stakes winners have had slower than average times.
5. The betting favorite has not fared well lately - only 7 of the favorites have won since 1980.

Now let's look at the betting odds of the winning horse.

1. Obviously, all of the favorites that won had low betting odds. 
2. The 2 horses that won the Triple Crown but were not the betting favorites still had very low betting odds.
3. There have been many more long-shot winners (> 20:1 odds) in the past 15 years (5) than all previous years (3).  I don't know if this has to do with the format of the race (more horses allowed to run) or there is greater disparity in horse racing today.

Did I miss anything?