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1.) Daddy Long Legs – The United Arab Emirates have (has?) way too much money, and because of that, the Meydan Race Course—formerly Nad al Sheba—holds stakes races with gigantic purses that no American track can match. The U.A.E. Derby, run in March for three year olds in Dubai, has a $2 million purse, just like the Kentucky Derby. Because the winner earns so much money, they have an automatic entry into the Kentucky Derby if they want it.
Evaluating the Dubai races is always a massive pain in the butt. For one thing, the track is a synthetic surface, not dirt, and there’s a question of how well horses on one surface will do on the other. Any horse that runs in Dubai has to make the lengthy trip back to Kentucky, which interferes with their training schedule. Finally, the competition is completely different from the horses running in the United States; while most of the crop over here has faced one another in varying combinations over the past year, the Meydan horses are invaders taking on new competition for the first time. Sorting through these different factors can be a nightmare.
Luckily, things aren’t quite so bad this year, since Daddy Long Legs has made one start in the United States already. Even more luckily, that race was the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile, where he faced eight other horses racing in the Kentucky Derby on the exact same Churchill Downs track. And he lost to all but one of them, refusing to run a lick in his one chance on dirt against similar competition. Daddy Long Legs drew the rail, which is perhaps the worst place to be for a mid-pack type such as him. His trainer, Aidan O’Brien, isn’t even bothering to make the trip over from Europe, and while there are some important races going on that day across the pond, O’Brien’s absence should probably tell you something. All these little hints are enough to make Daddy Long Legs an automatic throw out for me with far less hesitancy of most Meydan horses.
2.) Optimizer – I’m not above being bitter that some future claimer drew into the Derby because some future allowance horse scratched out, and that’s what happened on Tuesday when Mark Valeski left opted out of the race. Optimizer won a race back in August of last year. He hasn’t since. He’s still eligible for an n1X, and just about the only feather in his cap is a near-miss in the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn this past March. His trainer D. Wayne Lukas hasn’t won a stakes races in something like his last 100 tries (not an exaggeration), and he was beaten by over 20 lengths last time out. I hate you Optimizer, and I hate you Mark Valeski. This is all you get.
3.) Take Charge Indy – One of several talented colts that will likely be at or near the front of the race. Part of the challenge this year is finding the horses that will either best be able to withstand the early heat, or will be able to control themselves despite their desire to not have dirt kicked in their face.
We have three dirt races to look at for Take Charge Indy. In the first, the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile last November, TCI couldn’t make the front and didn’t do a darn thing against a solid group. After a short rest, he came back against tough allowance company at Gulfstream Park over a sloppy track, losing by two lengths to fellow Derby entrant El Padrino after turning in fast fractions. Finally, last time out in the Florida Derby, TCI held off a late challenge from Union Rags, amongst others.
The Florida Derby has been maybe the premiere Kentucky Derby prep race over the past few years, starting with Barbaro in 2006 and Big Brown in 2008, so any winner of that race cannot be taken too lightly here. However, I’m skeptical for a few reasons. First is the general handicap that all speed types are going to be working against this year. The one time on dirt that TCI hung behind the leaders, he failed to make up any ground against his opposition. In the races where he has sat on the front, his closes have been slow; Take Charge Indy has not finished the stretch from the final call to the finish line at a better than 12 second per furlong pace.
My final reason for staying away is jockey Calvin Borel, who, yes yes, Bo-Rail and He Just Wins The Derby and all that. Hell, he even won the Derby with Super Saver, a horse with very similar past performances and in a Derby with a very similar pace setup as this race figures to get. But there is going to be a whole lot of casual money coming in on this horse on the basis of Borel alone. Horses win races; jockeys lose them. If your sole basis for betting someone in the Derby is the rider, I recommend you don’t. For that reason I’d recommend to stick to exotic betting if you truly like TCI here and stay out of the win pool, just because there will be less jockey money in those pools. I think stamina will prove an issue and will avoid.
4.) Union Rags – The presumptive favorite since last fall, Union rags hasn’t done anything to relinquish that claim. Only trouble is, he hasn’t done much to claim it, either. After drawing off to easy victories in a pair of New York stakes races last autumn, Union Rags went off as the odds-on favorite in the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile and just missed by a head against Hansen despite having a much longer trip around the track. Union Rags was freshened a bit, brought back in late February for the Fountain of Youth Stakes, and romped over a mediocre group. Around that time, you could have locked in Union Rags at 4-1 in futures bets, a pretty low price considering the fragility of racehorses and the unpredictability of the Derby the day before, much less two months.
Two events have thrown Union Rags’s superiority into doubt. He first was the monster race run by Bodemeister in the Arkansas Derby, which stood head-and-shoulders above anything Union Rags has yet accomplished. The second was the disappointing third place in the Florida Derby, the worst finish of Union Rags’s career.
The most common excuse for the effort is traffic trouble around the final turn, and while there was some close quarters racing, I’m not sure that is sufficient to explain the poor showing. Horses have faced worse troubles than that, and Union Rags had at least the final eighth of a mile completely free of interference and still couldn’t muster a sub-12 second furlong.
Even further troubling is that now, looking back over previous races, nothing particularly stands out on paper. The speed ratings are just so-so; he’s been consistent, which is nice, but never popped higher than a 95 even in perfect set-ups. Union Rags is a much better horse visually than the raw sheet would suggest, so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Still, this is your probable favorite, and at pretty low odds, you usually demand a bit more from these types for the amount of hype he has gotten.
In fairness, the connections have known since at least October that the Derby was a very likely target. This is Union Rags’s third race back off the winter layoff, and he likely hasn’t been fully amped up for the earlier works. It’s probably folly to ignore Union Rags completely, and he will be included in my exotic bets with quite a bit of frequency. At the 9-2 or so you are likely to get betting him on the nose, however, I can’t say I’d be particularly excited.
5.) Dullahan – One of the trickiest calls of this field. On the one hand, you have a closer with a nasty final kick in a race that figures to set up perfectly for it. On the other, you have a possible potential turf/polytrack specialist who’s best finish on dirt was a 3rd place finish in his first ever start. (Just as an aside: both Daddy Nose Best and Dullahan made their first start in a June 9 Maiden Special Weight at Churchill Downs. The pair finished second and third, each several lengths behind a horse named Exfactor, who went on win the Grade 3 Bashford Manor Stakes in his next start. When put on the Derby trail, Exfactor stunk up the joint, finishing 11th in a LeComte Stakes that included zero Derby starters.
He was then entered in an ungraded stakes, went to the post as favorite, and once again finished third to last. He hasn’t had a workout since March. The two horses that finished a combined 13 lengths or so behind him in June are going to the gate at Churchill on the first Saturday in May, both with legitimate chances to win. Horse racing is funny that way.)
Anyway, back to Dullahan. After a couple of early disappointing efforts on dirt, Dullahan was pointed to the turf at Saratoga, actually finishing third as a maiden in the Grade 2 With Anticipation Stakes. His first win came in the Grade One Breeder’s Futurity at Keeneland over polytrack.
The polytrack win brought Dullahan, a pricey $250,000 yearling, back onto the Derby trail, and back onto the dirt at Churchill in the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile that so many horses here ran in. The finish was a respectable fourth, though in reality he did little but pass some very tired horses late; third place Creative Cause finished five lengths ahead of Dullahan. After the (probably expected) disappointment in the Juvenile, Dullahan was brought back to the turf, where he just missed in the Palm Beach Stakes at Gulfstream after a very wide trip.
None of that is particularly remarkable, but Dullahan’s win in the Blue Grass Stakes last time out was outstanding, with the closer finishing the final furlong in under 11.5 seconds and passing Hansen in the stretch. The speed figure came up reasonably strong, and if nothing else, he certainly looked the part of a horse who can get the full 10 furlong distance of the Derby. And if the pace melts down up front, someone with a ferocious closing kick could fly past the field late.
I watch that Blue Grass and feel like Dullahan could run away with this race, but a few things keep holding me back. First, Keeneland has not been kind to Derby runners since they installed the synthetic surface a few years ago. Second, the difference in Dullahan’s record at and away from Keeneland is striking: 2 for 2 at Keeneland, 0 for 6 away, including 0 for 3 on dirt losing by a combined 21 or so lengths. His training over dirt over the past couple of weeks has reportedly been mediocre, and that powerful closing kick was entirely absent the one time he ran at a distance at Churchill, finishing the final 2.5 furlongs in over 31 seconds despite doing absolutely none of the work up front. His trips have been wide, yes, but he’s going to have to pass 15 or 16 horses to win, and chances are he’s going to be a few paths out around the final turn again on Saturday. Dullahan’s record would be intriguing if he were a Prospective-type longshot, but the Blue Grass win likely catapulted him to single-digit-to-one odds. I can see this one biting me on the butt, and I’ve puzzled over him for quite a while, but I’m not playing Dullahan to win at all, and only sparingly underneath.
6.) Bodemeister – The best horse in the race. Which is not to say Bodemeister will win, mind you, or even that you should pick him to win; betting horses is about playing percentages, not finding favorites. Yet Bodemeister is an extremely solid pick: last three efforts with 100+ speed figure, solid closing fractions despite doing lots of work out front, a 9 ½ length win in the Arkansas Derby, Bob Baffert as trainer.
There are really only two negatives against Bodemeister. The first is the general difficulty of winning the Derby from near the front. Big Brown sat up near the pace, going wide around both turns to boot, but that was a weak field and Big Brown was easily the best horse in that race (and his 2-1 odds reflected that). Super Saver hung near the front but got an absolutely perfect trip through the inside, cutting a few lengths off his trip. War Emblem set easy-ish fractions, at least compared to other derbies. In general, it’s a bit better to be coming back from a bit further behind the front.
The second negative is directly related to the first; not only is winning the Kentucky Derby from the front generally hard, but it will likely be impossible in this race with the presence of Trinniburg. The only races Bodemeister has failed to win were efforts in which he could not set the pace by the first call, though there are legitimate reasons for each losing effort.
Note what isn’t on my negative list. Bodemeister didn’t run as a 2 year old, and no horse has won the Derby and not run as a two year old since the 1880s. Fine. But these cute little trivia exercises seem to come up every year and fall by the wayside almost as often. Went the Day Well didn’t win a race until eight weeks ago; is it really better than he had a couple of OK starts in Britain and thereby negated the “curse?”
Bodemeister may be the favorite on Saturday, and I can’t really argue he shouldn’t be. Of all the horses likely to be up near the front, he seems most likely to be able to withstand a quick opening and still be able to hang on. I’m not anxious to bet him to win at favorite prices, but one of the great things about the Derby is the many options and deep pools. If you are going to play any kind of exotic bets (exactas, trifectas, pick 4, etc.) I don’t see how you can leave Bodemeister out. And if the pace starts to scare people and you see Bodemeister wander up towards, say, 8-1 or so, that looks like an awfully solid play in my opinion.
7.) Rousing Sermon – Let’s look for the good first, as is befitting a civilized people such as ourselves. Rousing Sermon wouldn’t be a Mine That Bird type surprise. He’s a better horse than Done Talking. He’s won on the dirt at Santa Anita. He is going to be coming from the back, which is where you probably want to be this year in the Derby.
Those are the positives. The negative list is far longer. Rousing Sermon hasn’t won a race since two days before last Halloween, and has never won a race amongst horses bred outside of California. His best effort, by far, came over the synthetic surface at Hollywood Park, and even that was a losing effort in a pretty mediocre Cash Call Futurity. He’s lost to several of the horses he’ll face on Derby day, including just about the entire West Coast contingent, and he’s had plenty of chances to top those horses. For a closer, he hasn’t really shown much ability to, you know, close, especially on dirt. Oh, he also lost to a 109-1 shot, and a horse that lost a shoe, his last time out in the Louisiana Derby.
At nine races, Rousing Sermon is one of the more experienced colts in the field, which is a nice positive heading into a race with 19 others. But in nine chances, he hasn’t shown anything close to elite ability yet, regardless of surface, pace set-up, or competition. All credit in the world to making the field, but it’s not happening. Complete toss.
8.) Creative Cause – I’ve struggled quite a bit this year with the top flight California horses. One of my lodestars throughout the prep season was that the California races were registering unrealistic speed figures and that the entire crop was a bit overrated. The Santa Anita Derby, the premiere West Coast prep race, seemed to confirm my suspicions, as both the early pace and final times of the race came up disappointingly weak.
But my anti-California stance was blown out of the water by Bodemeister, who practically lapped the field after travelling to Oaklawn for the Arkansas Derby. Creative Cause beat Bodemeister in the San Felipe back in March, earning a strong 102 Beyer for the effort. The disappointing second place finish in the Santa Anita Derby could perhaps be excused as a bad race, though there really wasn’t much of a reason for his inability to pass I’ll Have Another in the stretch.
Then I saw this quote:
‘“He doesn’t like to be crowded. In deep stretch (in the Santa Anita Derby), those horses were crowding him and then when the inside horse dropped off, he (Creative Cause) leveled off and actually came back on the winner. But when all three of them were head and head, he didn’t like it that much. He got smashed and annihilated at Del Mar in the (2011) Futurity (gr. I) and it’s affected him; he doesn’t like crowds, but obviously he’ll have to deal with it (in the Kentucky Derby)."’
Yeah, no crap. Creative Cause is going to be facing 19 others on Derby day, and the seas aren’t going to just part for him. Even if the colt has the talent and ability to make a stretch run, it sounds like he’s going to have to do it the long way, because the horse is unwilling to press through traffic himself. That is a remarkably candid admission by Mr. Harrington, and I commend him for his refreshing honesty. It also makes Creative Cause a toss for me.
9.) Trinniberg – A great example of why your handicapping must take account of horses that have no chance of winning. It’s not that Trinniberg is a bad horse; winner of the Swale and Bay Shore stakes by a combined nine lengths, Trinniberg likely has a nice career ahead of him as a sprinter. The only problem is that the Kentucky Derby is a route, not a sprint, and asking a horse like Trinniberg to win the Derby is like asking a collegiate level track star to win the Boston Marathon.
Whether he can win or not (he can’t), Trinniberg will affect every other horse in the field just by running. What was sure to be a very quick pace with Hansen, Bodemeister, Gemologist, and a few others will now likely be suicidal. Last year’s first six furlongs were run in 1:13 and change (admittedly a very slow pace for the Derby). Trinniberg went a hair under 1:09 in the Swale. That four seconds doesn’t sound like much, but a horse caught anywhere near the vicinity of that kind of pace will be done well before the finish line.
Even if Trinniberg dials it back a little—and he will, because jockeys and trainers aren’t that stupid—he has more early speed than any horse in a field chock full of early speed. His presence up front is likely to pull the other horses a little bit faster they want to go. So the quick pace will not just fry Trinniberg, but likely hurt a few others as well.
It’s easy to blame the owners here for entering a horse that has no chance and has never run more than 7 furlongs (the Derby is 10). But on the other hand, hell, it’s the Kentucky Derby, and owner/trainer Bisnath Parboo is not one of the doyens of the sport. He’s a small time trainer from Barbados in his 70s who happened to have a pretty neat three year old that technically qualified to make the field. He didn’t design the graded stakes earnings system, and he’s not all that likely to ever have a Derby horse again, so let the man enjoy the best shrimp cocktail he’ll ever have in his life in the owner’s box at Churchill, even if it means coming in 18th.
10.) Daddy Nose Best – The veteran of the group, Daddy Nose Best will be making the 11th start of his career on Saturday (by way of comparison, Bodemeister is making his 5th start. Affirmed’s Kentucky Derby in 1978 was his 14th). There was no particular clue that this would be a Kentucky Derby horse during Daddy Nose Best’s two year old campaign; instead of the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile that so many of the entrants here raced in, Daddy Nose Best ran in the Juvenile Turf, finishing 6th of 14. After racing eight times as a two year old, Daddy Nose Best had only two wins, both on the grass.
Trainer Steve Asmussen decided to make the transition from grass to synthetics and ran Daddy Nose Best in the El Camino Real Stakes at Golden Gate Fields in February. In that race, the colt’s first as a three year old, Daddy Nose Best turned in his best performance by far, closing hard over a track that had favored speed types all day. Hoping to avoid what looked like a backlog of Derby contenders in California, Asmussen then moved the horse to Sunland Park in New Mexico for the Sunland Derby, a race which was once a footnote but gained graded status after Mine That Bird’s performance there in 2009.
The Sunland Derby was, in my opinion, perhaps the most underrated prep race of the Derby season, with Daddy Nose Best and Isn’t He Clever burying a more-solid-than-it-looks field. The speed figure came back impressive, with Daddy Nose Best being the only horse besides Bodemeister to enter the Derby off a triple digit Beyer speed rating (other speed ratings confirm that number).
Since that race 6 weeks ago, Daddy Nose Best has been training at Churchill Downs, where he has by all accounts taken marvelously to the track. He gets a positive jockey change to Garrett Gomez, is well rested, and his mid pack style seems to fit exactly what the pace setup of this race will need. And yet compared to Dullahan, Union Rags, etc. he is getting practically no hype.
A couple of days ago I thought I might just get something like 30-1, but a few people are starting to catch on; within the past week all the handicappers on the official Kentucky Derby website moved Daddy Nose Best into their top ten, when four of the six recently excluded him. Still, at minimum, Daddy Nose Best will be priced behind Bodemeister, Union Rags, Dullahan, Creative Cause, Gemologist, and Hansen, and there’s a pretty good chance he is priced behind Alpha, I’ll Have Another, and Take Charge Indy as well. I do not believe that Daddy Nose Best is the best horse in the Kentucky Derby. I do think, however, that he offers the best chance of a solid score this year, and I will be leaning heavily on him in all my betting.
11.) Alpha – I think the Wood Memorial is a difficult race to decipher. Neither Gemologist nor Alpha had a terrible time around the track, and both looked visually impressive in their stretch run. It looked at the top of the stretch as though Alpha would put Gemologist away, but he instead leveled off once paired. I’ve seen it suggested that Alpha may have been momentarily frazzled by the shadows at Aqueduct, though I’m not sure I buy that.
If you put a line through the Wood effort, you are left with a horse that—despite going 3 for 5—has never really been very impressive, and even his race in the Wood wasn’t exactly legendary, given how he topped out in the stretch. Alpha was one of the group who ran in the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile but did very little during the race. He lost to Union Rags by over five lengths when during the colts’ two year old campaigns, and the two wins this season came over quite shabby groups. On the other hand, The Lumber Guy came out of the Wood to win the Jerome Stakes two weeks later, so Alpha may have beat some quality there.
Most years it seems as though a horse that has run primarily in New York gets overrated based on that alone, and I think that may be the case here. There’s no reason to think Alpha has improved enough to beat, say, Union Rags, whose own figures are fairly pedestrian. Gemologist looked as though he could have held off Alpha for another furlong if necessary. There is also a rumor that Alpha was fighting a sickness of some kind earlier in the week, though he seems to have recovered. There is a great deal of enthusiasm surrounding Alpha, and I don’t really see why.
12.) Prospective – With four wins and two places in eight lifetime starts, Prospective is a good example of why it is a bad idea to look too deeply into a horse’s winning percentage. Two of Prospective’s three wins came on the synthetic surface at Woodbine, including a win in the Grade 3 Grey (just like Mine That Bird); he followed those efforts with a last place finish in the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile (just like Mine That Bird! Yes, I do have post-traumatic stress disorder from 2009). And unlike Mine That Bird, Prospective has done something positive as a three year old, winning two stakes races at Tampa Bay Downs and placing in a third.
Problem is, none of those races where Prospective finished in the money were particularly good; his best effort was probably in the Tampa Bay Derby, and none of the horses he beat that day will even sniff the Kentucky Derby. He has faced nine Derby participants in his career thus far and finished behind all eight of them. Besides Done Talking, he has displayed the slowest speed figures on average in the field.
All that being said, and maybe this is the PTSD talking, but if I were going to take a chance with a crazy 50-1 type horse this year, Prospective would be the one. His win in the Tampa Bay Derby is more impressive than anything, say, Dullahan has done on dirt thus far in his career, and you’ll be getting at least four times as much in return if you pull off the coup. He’s been forced wide on quite a few of his trips, and he’s had experience in large fields. A sneaky trip through the middle might be possible—the horse will have the nerves for it if jockey Luis Contreras does—and if so he may improve by a length or two just by saving ground alone. Plus the pace profile fits here; mid-pack type that can pick off some tiring horses late.
I would be absolutely shocked if Prospective won, and more than a little surprised if he were to hit the board. But if you play exotics like trifectas and especially superfectas, I don’t think you can automatically toss him. And if he clunks his way to third, the payouts could be huge depending upon who finishes in front of him. Intriguing.
13.) Went the Day Well – If Prospective is throwing off major Mine That Bird vibes, Went the Day Well most closely resembles last year’s winner Animal Kingdom, who won the Spiral Stakes at Turfway but was largely untested on dirt. Unlike Animal Kingdom, Went the Day Well has at least raced over the natural surface, breaking his maiden (i.e., winning his first race) on the dirt at Gulfstream. The two horses also share a trainer (Graham Motion) and a largely turf-minded pedigree.
For all those similarities, the most significant difference is that we have actually seen Went the Day Well on Dirt, and while he is 1 for 2 on the surface, neither effort was particularly impressive. The Turfway synthetic surface seems to translate decently to the track at Churchill Downs, and Went the Day Well showed a nice turn of foot at the end of that race visually, but the closing fraction came up a bit slower than what you’d like to see from a true mid-pack or closing type over synthetic. He hasn’t been taking to the Churchill surface all that well if you read between the lines, and it is fairly likely that this is a true synthetic specialist, unlike Animal Kingdom. There’s a fair amount of wise guy smoke around this colt but, with some hesitancy, I’m going to resist the siren song here and toss.
14.) Hansen – Three very good horses are going to be near the front of the pace, along with a few other no-chancers. Hansen is one of the very good horses. Winner of a loaded Breeder’s Cup Juvenile, Hansen got away with a moderately easy lead in that effort and held off Union Rags and Dullahan, among others, to win the most prestigious two year old race of the year in 2011. He followed that up with an extremely game effort in the Holy Bull, finishing second after rushing to the front following a bad break. His Gotham win next time out was thoroughly professional. His effort in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland was phenomenal despite finishing second, with Hansen turning in blistering fractions and holding on to place over a track that does not appreciate speed horses up front. The colt is one of the best horses in this field, and he will win more Grade 1 races this year, maybe at the classic length (10 furlongs) but perhaps at a mile instead. Even better, his owner has shown an interest in actually racing Hansen, a rarity these days when precocious three year olds are retired as soon as possible. I hope we see him hang around the handicap division for a while.
All that being said: Hansen is not winning the Derby, and I would be surprised if he hit the board. Of all the horses in this race, Hansen was most compromised by Trinniberg’s entry and has shown the least inclination for laying off a hot pace. I think Gemologist and Bodemeister may be able to resist a blistering start; Hansen is going to get sucked into it, and he may valiantly hold out for 8 or 9 furlongs (unlike Trinniberg), but the distance combined with the speed is going to get him. He’ll get a softer pace later this year, maybe as soon as the Preakness, and he’ll have a chance to show his class then. But stay away on Saturday. Complete toss for me.
15.) Gemologist – The only undefeated horse running in the Kentucky Derby. Granted, Gemologist has only run in five races, but he has also shown a fair amount of flexibility, winning from the front in three of those races and from just off the pace in two others. That second talent will come in handy on Saturday, since he is simply not fast enough to take the lead out of the gate (and the jockey would be foolish to try).
His effort last out in the Wood Memorial is probably a good approximation of what will have to happen in the Derby. There, Gemologist sat a couple lengths off a hot pace (hotter than the raw fractions indicate), pulled ahead at the top of the stretch, then gamely held off a late charge from Alpha. The final fraction was, to be fair, slower than one would like to see. But this is a lightly raced horse making only his sixth start, and third off a lengthy layoff; there’s reason to believe his best race is yet to be run. Gemologist probably goes off as the third choice behind Bodemeister and Union Rags, and that feels about right. Not great value, but a logical contender.
16.) El Padrino – Spanish for “The Padrino.” I keep trying to put El Padrino away and can’t. Another horse going nowhere in his three year old campaign, El Padrino has run two pretty solid races and a bit of a stinker so far this year. And if Union Rags gets and excuse for his trip in the Florida Derby I’m not so sure El Padrino shouldn’t also; he went a heck of a lot further around the track than Union Rags, for one thing, and was chasing the same slow-ish pace. And if you look past that race you see two very good efforts this year that leave him solidly in the second tier of horses in this race.
Two major concerns: first, his training hasn’t been stellar, and he lost some time in Florida due to rain. Second, there has been almost no conversation about El Padrino during the lead-up to the race. That’s great for his price, but it does cause me to figuratively scratch my chin and ponder life’s great questions. A definite contender if the track is muddy, but I think there should be room on your ticket somewhere regardless of track condition on Saturday.
17.) Done Talking – Yes, yes, here’s what I said about Mine That Bird in 2009:
“One of the bad things about having so many repeat graded stakes winners in the Derby is that it doesn't take all that much in earnings to get into the race, because the top 10 or so entries absorb so much of the money. Mine That Bird might be the worst entry I've seen in the Derby; he's definitely worse than any entry from the past two years.”
Mine That Bird won by a larger margin of victory in the Derby than any horse since the 1940s. OOPS.
With that necessary disclaimer out of the way: Done Talking is a suck horse who won a suck maiden special weight in a five horse field at Delaware, then another suck allowance race at Philadelphia Park in a six horse field. He missed the board in a suck version of the Remsen as a two year old last November, then ran tenth in the Gotham 20 lengths behind Hansen; the charter’s notes in that race was that he “had no rally,” which is a polite way of saying he sucked. Then he won the Illinois Derby, and because the Illinois Derby still has graded status despite Hawthorne smelling like urine and no important horse running in that race since 2002, Done Talking qualifies for the Kentucky Derby.
Every other horse in the field has run at least one better race than Done Talking’s best effort, and a few have never run a worse race than Done Talking’s best. The best thing I can say about Done Talking is that he is a closer in a race that figures to have plenty of speed up top. But Done Talking is a “closer” in the same way I’d be a closer in the 100 meter race at the Olympics. In the Illinois Derby, he needed 13 seconds to finish the final eighth of a mile (by way of comparison: Bodemeister finished the final eighth mile of the Arkansas Derby in 12 seconds despite doing all the work out in front). Automatic toss.
18.) Sabercat – Here’s a good example of how slots and the silly graded earnings system are hurting the Kentucky Derby. Horses that want to enter the Derby are ordered by earnings in graded stakes races. If you have a nominated three year old in the top twenty in earnings, you qualify. If one of those top 20 decides not to run, number 21 qualifies, and so on. It doesn’t matter whether the graded race came as a two or three year old; over dirt, turf, or rubber; as a sprint or a route; in America or abroad. Top 20 in graded earnings = in.
At the same time, states desperate for money—and they are always desperate for money—have turned to slot machines as an easy source of tax revenue. When slots are proposed, there’s a voter backlash because think of the children, and the compromise inevitably reached is that slots will be limited to areas where there is already gambling, i.e. horse tracks.
The tracks then get a cut of the revenue, which they can then spend however they wish. Rather than lowering takeout or repainting the restrooms or making their video feed not look like a pornographic film from the 1970s, the tracks usually decide to raise purses. Only Churchill Downs has the Kentucky Derby, but every crappy bullring can have a Derby prep, so long as they can get the race to be a graded stakes. Offer enough money as a purse and you’ll attract OK competition, Eventually, it will become graded, and we have yet another damn prep race.
But what do you do if you have a track that only runs in the late fall and early winter and you still want to spend your dirty slot money on a prep race of your very own? Why, you run a graded stakes race for two year olds and offer an outlandish $1 million purse, enough that the winner will practically have an automatic entry to the Derby should the owner so choose. Thus the Delta Downs Jackpot Stakes, which has been run since 2002 and has produced zero horses that have had any impact whatsoever on the Derby (though 2008 winner turned in a nice career as a sprinter).
Back to Sabercat, who won the Delta Downs Jackpot in November and hasn’t done a damn thing worth mentioning since. This is his third race back after the winter layoff: the first effort was a trouncing in the Rebel Stakes, and he lost by just shy of 10 lengths to Bodemeister in the Arkansas Derby last out. There’s no evidence that Sabercat is one of the top three year olds, but he did win six months ago over a group of horses you’ve never heard of at the third most prestigious track in Louisiana. Complete toss.
19.) I’ll Have Another – One of the biggest challenges for the handicapper looking at this Derby is figuring out what to make of the West Coast horses. My guiding light up until around five weeks ago was that the horses running in California were all being wildly overrated, a theory that blew up when Bodemeister obliterated the Arkansas Derby field.
Part of the problem is that the Santa Anita Derby, run one week before the Arkansas Derby, just wasn’t a very good race. It got a decent speed figure, but the pace was slow (for the rock hard tracks of California) and the closing fractions were not much better. Maybe you can excuse Creative Cause (much more on him in his section), since he was coming from further back and was compromised by the sluggish pace; the horses coming from the front still had tons of energy at the end. So what was I’ll Have Another’s excuse for such a mediocre showing?
OK, I’m being a little hard on a horse who did, after all, win the race, and won the Robert B Lewis Stakes before that in his only two races as a three year old. But I’ll Have Another will never in his life get a better set-up then he faced in the Santa Anita Derby, and he needed every hair on his head to win. This time out, the pace will be much quicker, the finish will be faster, and he’ll have to demonstrate far more talent than he’s shown thus far in his career.
So why all the love from journalists for I’ll Have Another? On the official Kentucky Derby website, two of the six experts had I’ll Have Another as their top selection a week before the race. All six had him in their top ten. My theory is that he beat Creative Cause in the Santa Anita Derby, and Creative Cause beat Bodemeister in the San Felipe, so by the transitive property that makes I’ll Have Another the best horse out of California. That kind of logic has burned a lot of money over the years. I’ll Have Another, unlike Creative Cause and Bodemeister, has never run a particularly impressive race in his life, and he’ll be running headlong into a suicidal pace unlike any he’s ever experienced. If you want 12-1 on that, be my guest. Toss for me.
20.) Liaison – I honestly don’t have much interesting to say about Liaison. He still hasn’t won a race since his 2yo year. Breeding strongly suggests that distance is a problem. The speed figures aren’t horribad but he’d have to improve a fair bit to even be competitive. He has already proven that he is a fair bit worse than most of the California contingent, with Rousing Sermon being the only weaker horse from that group. Baffert knows what he is doing and trainers have won with backup horses before, but there’s not much else pointing in this direction. And he’s breaking from the very far outside. No chance in hell. Quote this section when Liaison wins the Derby by 12 lengths.
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Fire Phil Emery
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