Ask anyone what the most phenomenal accomplishment in racing in 2003 was and it's highly unlikely you'll hear a word about Nick Kling. He works for a newspaper (Troy Record) that doesn't get much attention and does a job (public handicapper) that doesn't get much acclaim. That's a shame. Funny Cide, Bobby Frankel, Jerry Bailey and Richard Mandella all did extraordinary things in 2003. This guy did the impossible.

It seems that Kling, who was a farmer before making the unlikely transition to handicapping, wants to be the very best at whatever he does, whether it's growing carrots or picking the horses. So he pours some 65 hours a week into his work, studying the Daily Racing Form, watching replays and taking notes on every horse that runs at the New York tracks. His goal, he says, is to know more about the horses competing in New York than anyone.

It seems like an awful lot of work for a job that probably doesn't pay that well and for a person who is an admitted small-timer when it comes to playing the horses himself, but when 2003 was over Kling had something to show for his troubles. Kling's newspaper picks showed a flat-bet profit for the year, an achievement so remarkable any other public handicapper would have told you it simply can't be done.

Kling is required to pick every race every racing day at the New York tracks for the Record. He doesn't have the luxury of passing a race he doesn't care for or altering his selection after an unexpected storm changes the track to a soupy mess. Those are just some of the reasons it so difficult to be a winning public handicapper.

The primary, some would say, insurmountable, hurdle is the takeout. In New York, it's 15 percent on a win bet, meaning that only 85 percent of the total bet in the pool is returned to winning gamblers. A handicapper with perfectly average skills who bets every race will lose 15 percent of the amount he invests over the course of time. A recent report detailing the activities of some of the biggest and smartest gamblers in the country, those who play with the rebate shops, showed that even they are steady losers. Collectively, they lost about 8 percent of the amount they invested, but many were able to grind out a profit thanks to the rebates.

Some public handicappers are good and some are not, but even the very best feel fortunate when they have a winning meet. It was something I was able to do only a handful of times during my 10 years as a published handicapper. It's just too hard to overcome the takeout over a long stretch of time.

But Kling did it. In 2003, he picked 2,315 races and had 782 winners (33.8 percent). Anyone betting $2 to win on every one of his selections would have had to invest $4,630. The 782 winners returned a total of $4,695, for a $65 profit or a return on investment of $2.03 for every $2 wagered.

(And before anyone casts any doubts on Kling's claims, note that the Troy Record diligently verifies the records of its handicappers. Before Kling was hired, the Record was burned by a handicapper who apparently fudged his record only to be caught and embarrassed by a rival paper).

Looking back on 2003, he remembers the losers more than the winners, and they bother him to no end. That's a good way top be when you're striving to beat what is supposed to be an unbeatable game.

"Horse racing is a very humbling game," he said. "Just about the time when you figure you know something, it reminds you that don't know nearly as much as you thought. Maybe we (the public handicappers) are a little bit better than people betting from the stands, but not that much better. I'm the type who feels I should be right every single time. But you lose two out of every three races. That keeps you grounded."

After graduating from Cornell in 1972, Kling went to work on his family's farm in Fonda, New York, growing products for Beech-Nut baby food. But, realizing that farming was hardly a growth industry, he started looking around for something else to do. He sold the farm in 1988 and started consulting for other farming operations. But the seeds were planted for his second career about the same time he sold the farm. He knew nothing about racing, but allowed his wife to drag him to Saratoga one afternoon in 1988. A few steps inside the gates, he knew this was where he belonged.

"I just felt at home," he said. "I felt comfortable."

It was shortly after that that Kling, bitten by the racing bug, read an article in Sports Illustrated detailing the exploits of racing writers Steven Crist and Andy Beyer, both Harvard graduates and both noteworthy gamblers who had had their share of success at the pari-mutuel windows.

"That made me realize that betting on horses was not the sole function of degenerates and nitwits," he said. "I realized that educated people did it, too."

He got his first job as a handicapper with the Amsterdam Recorder in 1992 and moved to the Record in 1998. He says he was only moderately successful during his first few years and didn't get over the hump until realizing he couldn't rely on speed figures. Now, he mainly relies on pace figures, trainer angles and his race-watching abilities, trying to pick up the type of subtle bad trips others may not see.

"I will take speed figures and final times into account, but I'm not afraid to pick a horse who might look too slow," he said. "That may make me look stupid at times, but I'm going to be wrong two out of three times anyways, and this way I might come up with the occasional $20 winner."

Kling says his handicapping excellence has not put a lot of money into his own pockets. As phenomenal as showing a 1.5 percent profit is, it's not going to make anyone wealthy. Plus, he says gambling is merely a "fun diversion," and not what he's really interested in, which is picking winners for his reader. So he's not getting rich and he's not getting that much recognition. (Astonishingly, the Record doesn't even bother putting his picks on its website.) He showed a flat-bet profit with his picks and the vote from this writer and former frustrated handicapper for Racing Feat of the Year.