Irish Boy wrote:
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.
I should have paid more attention to this.