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   Consolidator is out of the Derby ---

   Derby contender Consolidator retired because of injury

   http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20050502-1356-rac-kentuckyderby-consolidatorout.html [signonsandiego.com]">http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20 [signonsandiego.com] ... orout.html

   

   posted by drtnapper07

   May 2 2005 5:47pm
2. 0 likes

   Run For The Roses :

   Some pretty fair reading follows :

   Part I :

   Derby 131. Yes, folks, it's time. As of right now, we have twenty-one eligible horses and twenty spots. Going wisdom has it that Don't Get Mad will be bumped in favor of Greeley's Galaxy, both of whom are owned by B. Wayne Hughes, who has a very tough decision to make. Since it's doubtful that which one runs will affect the Derby's setup horribly, we'll just handicap as if we have a twenty-one horse field (as we well should by now; Bob Baffert's Danthebluegrassman antics a few years ago should really have alerted Thoroughbred racing's powers that be that putting limits on the size of the field leads to ludicrous behavior by the connections of those in said field).

   SPEED

   The average winning Beyer Speed Figure for the Kentucky Derby is 110. Year in, year out, the horse who wins the Kentucky Derby runs a Beyer Speed Figure just around there. Thus, it makes perfect sense to throw out horses who have never run anywhere close. (Andrew Beyer posits that two BSF points equal one length at route distances. We at Goat Central have always said three points equal one length at any distance, but we'll try it Andy's way this year.) Now, as anyone who follows horses know, the most unpredictable time in a horse's development is spring of that horse's three-year-old season. Three-year-olds jump up and do things they never could before all the time during this portion of the year. If you're following along in your past performances, for example, look at Bellamy Road, this year's probable favorite, who went from a 96 Beyer winning a Gulfstream Park allowance race back on March 12th to a 120 winning the Wood Memorial, or, to a lesser extent, Bandini's five-point jump between his second-place finish in the Fountain of Youth and his win in the Blue Grass (which indicates that the Fountain of Youth was a far better race this year than it has been in quite a while, but that's a story for another paragraph).

   A side note on Bellamy Road's Wood Memorial. We underscore, here, that Bellamy Road's Wood Memorial is almost unanimously considered not only an amazing race but the best Derby prep ever run. By any horse. Ever. The Sheets guys made Ghostzapper's win in the 2004 Breeders' Cup Classic the best race they'd ever given numbers to. Bellamy Road's Wood is second on that list. Beyer Speed Figures? No one, but no one, runs a 120 as an early-season three-year-old. It's just not done. Which leads you to the inevitable conclusion that Bellamy Road is a freak of nature, and may be the best horse we've seen since Cigar, or possibly even before (one will not mention 1973's triple crown winner until Bellamy Road duplicates his feat). Maybe. Why maybe? We'll get into that later.

   In any case, back to speed. Using Goat Central's not-so-patented-but-still-worthwhile Beyer Elimination Method, this year's HLB horse (don't worry about the abbreviations if you don't know what they mean; just recognize that these are the two most important horses in the race, for different reasons) is High Fly, with a 95; the HBL3 horse is (obviously) Bellamy Road, with that insane 120. High Fly eliminates Spanish Chestnut, Andromeda's Hero, Sort It Out, and Going Wild out of hand, unless High Fly scratches out of the race. (Not bloody likely.)

   Using the average-Beyer-of-110 rule, we're going to look for horses who have run within three lengths of that (104, according to Mr. Andy). This is going to downgrade a whole lot more horses: Wilko, High Fly, Bandini, Flower Alley, Buzzards Bay, Greater Good, Coin Silver, Noble Causeway, Giacomo, Closing Argument, and Don't Get Mad. Now, note, we are not completely eliminating these horses, we're just saying they're the ones we were talking about above who would have to jump pretty far up in order to win this race, and that's not something that happens too often. Who are we left with? Afleet Alex, Consolidator, Bellamy Road, High Limit, Sun King, and Greeley's Galaxy as our to speed picks. If you want to narrow it down farther, Bellamy Roadis the obvious choice in speed, having run that blistering 120 (which, by the way, equalled Riva Ridge's thirty-year-old track record at the distance). However, Bellamy Road had never run anything close to that before, so if you want a slightly more solid pick on speed, Afleet Alex is the only horse in the race who has run a Beyer Speed Figure of over 100 twice in his last three races. In fact, only three horses in the race-- Afleet Alex, High Fly, and Going Wild-- have managed to run Beyers of 100 or more two or more times in their entire careers. (Afleet Alex has managed it three times, the other two twice each.) Consistency is good. We like consistency.

   FORM

   You'd like to think that every horse being entered in a race like the Kentucky Derby is going to be at the top of his game on the big day. Year after year, you'd be surprised at how wrong this assumption is. All Derby weekend, horses are entered in races for the sole purpose of their owners getting Derby box seats, and I'm not just talking about in the allowance races on the undercard, folks. Remember Deeds Not Words? Arguably the worst horse entered in the big event in Derby history. How about Corker? Built for Pleasure? And that's just in the last ten years.

   A hidden key to identifying whether the horse is heading up or down the form cycle is turn time. No one's exactly sure why this is, but a horse's turn time in his last two races is an excellent indicator of whether he's improving or declining. Without going into all the numbers and stuff, here's something surprising for you. The horse who most improved in his last start, and could do the same here? Sun King. His lackluster 24.4 turn time in the Tampa Bay Derby, which was basically a public workout, was cranked to a 23.3 in the Blue Grass, over a second's worth of improvement, and another strong indicator that the Blue Grass was actually the best prep this year for the Derby. (Sun King's fourth-place finish can be put down to Keeneland's speed-favoring properties, which also compromised Consolidator, who simply ran his race after bobbling at the start, never getting a chance.)

   Horses who are showing declining form coming into the Kentucky Derby: Wilko, Buzzards Bay. Coin Silver, Giacomo, Andromeda's Hero, Sort It Out, Going Wild, and Greeley's Galaxy. Note that Spanish Chestnut improved turn time in his last race, but tired in both and finished off the board; a similar finish can be predicted here.

   CLASS

   Both Mark Cramer and Jim Quinn have been saying, for the past few years, that in order to prove himself a true Grade I animal, and to be backed with confidence in a Grade I race, a horse must have previously won two Grade I races; otherwise, he might just be a fluke. A perfect example of this is Dare and Go, an allowance horse on his best day, winning the Pacific Classic in 1996.

   The problem here is that there are no two-time Grade I winners in the field. For that matter, out of twenty-one horses, only seven have won even a single Grade I; five have never even competed in a Grade I.

   On class, the first obvious choice is Afleet Alex, who won the Grade I HopefulStakes last year, then finished within a length in his next two Grade I outings, the Champagne Stakes and the Breeders' Cup Juvenile. Wilko, Sun King, and Consolidator are the only three other horses in the field to have competed in three or more Grade I races. (Interestingly, all four of them met in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile last year, finishing in the first, second, third, and fourth positions, and have avoided each other since.)

   Afleet Alex has defeated both Sun King and Consolidator multiple times before their match-up in the Kentucky Derby. Wilko has not yet faced either Afleet Alex or Sun King since; the only time they've met in 2005, Consolidator beat Wilko by eight lengths in the San Felipe Stakes.

   PACE

   Okay, this is where things get ugly. I'm not even going to try and go into all the detail that I should to convince you any of what I'm going to say in this section is worthwhile. You'll have to trust me on this. If not, I'll bung it all into a spreadsheet and put it up for you. Wanker.

   First, the basics (and I mean crude oversimplification here) of pace handicapping. There are three types of horses: early speed horses, who do all their best running on the lead; pace pressers, who run best from slightly off the leaders (“slightlyâ€Â

   

   posted by slam

   May 5 2005 9:04am
3. 0 likes

   Part II :

   Now for the others-- the confirmed pressers, the pressers/closers, and the stone closers. Pace analysis on most of them is useless, as they're by definition going to be far back early, and early fractions don't matter as much for them. Note that Afleet Alex's Arkansas Derby pacesetter, however, ran a full three seconds slower to the six-furlong pole than Bellamy Road did in the Wood. Can Afleet Alex get up to a 1:09.3 six-furlong mark and still go past like he did in Arkansas? Wilko saw a 1:09.3 once in his career, and got beaten by eight lengths. Why didn't Greater God close in the Arkansas Derby? Who knows? Fact is, though, his Rebel and Southwest wins weren't much more accomplished. Noble Causeway closed like a monster into a 1:09.4 six-furlong marker, so he makes the cut. Giacomo has, so far in his career, managed a single maiden win, and should be deservedly overlooked in the betting, but he didn't completely embarrass himself in the Santa Anita Derby, however weak it was. Andromeda's Hero is declining, and keeps getting beat by a horse we've already thrown out. Sort It Out, we have already ascertained, is too slow. Don't Get Mad, our final horse, closed into a decent 1:10.2 in the Derby Trial and won by seven lengths; if he can keep going at that rate after a decent opening three-quarters of a mile, then we have to think about him.

   So, after a quick and dirty pace analysis, we're left with the following horses: Bellamy Road, Consolidator, High Fly, Bandini (marginal), Noble Causeway, Giacomo (marginal), and Don't Get Mad. Seven horses-- a third of the field-- as contenders. Things look a lot more simple now, don't they?

   ...and I come back from lunch to learn that Consolidator has fractured a sesamoid and is out of the Derby. The one horse whose defection would change everything is gone.

   BREEDING

   The question of whether a horse can get the distance when no one in the field ha ever run it before is, of course, a valid one. It is not, however, the be-all and end-all of Derby handicapping; even if all seven contenders are not bred for the distance and Sort It Out is impeccably bred for the distance, I guarantee you Sort It Out will still not win the Kentucky Derby. This is extremely important, because if you're just looking at the Tomlinson figures in the Daily Racing Form, you are likely to do something extremely stupid with your money like putting it on Spanish Chestnut to win. It is, in fact, absolutely the case that Spanish Chestnut is bred to run all day. It is, however, also the case that Spanish Chestnut is already well established as a horse who wants no part of any race beyond a mile and a sixteenth, and in stakes, he's a confirmed sprinter. Pedigree is only useful as a handicapping factor in the cases of horses who have not already established the related question. Spanish Chestnut, a horse who has a proven inability to go nine furlongs, will not suddenly spring back to life in furlong number ten. Believe it.

   The Tomlinson ratings of our now-six contenders:

   High Fly 265

   (Consolidator, for the record: 298)

   Bellamy Road 330*

   Bandini 313

   Noble Causeway 265*

   Giacomo 220

   Don't Get Mad 262

   The asterisk means it's a new sire, and the ratings aren't firm yet. Still, the Bellamy Road – Bandini exacta looks pretty good right about now.

   SECONDARY CONSIDERATIONS

   “Never play a horse whose trainer or jockey is coming to the Derby for the first timeâ€Â

   

   posted by slam

   May 5 2005 9:06am
4. 0 likes

   Part III :

   Andromeda's Hero is the least noted, and the least notable, of Nick Zito's five Derby runners. Won the Sam Davis, a minor prep for the Tampa Bay Derby, then stepped up to graded stakes and promptly lost his first two engagements against company not nearly as heavy as that which he'll be facing in this race. Even if you take the stretch trouble in the ArkDerby into account, he had already run a demonstrably slower turn than he did in the Lane's End. Can't back him in here.

   Sort It Out is way too slow for this crowd, ran a bad WinStar Derby and a pathetic Lexington, and needs to go back to Aqueduct to regain his winning ways. He's certainly not going to do it here.

   Don't Get Mad is an intriguing horse in here. Ran a series of progressively-worse races on the prep circuit, then showed up at the Derby Trial and blew the field away. Has the angle of being undefeated over the Churchill strip, but has also never raced beyond a mile (which, it is very good to remember, is one turn here) at Churchill, and his races got worse as he increased in distance out west. Still, if he's a true Churchill freak, and some horses are, you'll certainly get the right price on him.

   Going Wild is D. Wayne Lukas' last Derby hope, and he has a distinct odor of Deeds Not Words to him. He's lost his last two races by a total of fifty-seven lengths and change, though granted one of the horses beating him was Bellamy Road (the other, however, was Coin Silver). In those two races, he beat a grand total of two horses of a possible fourteen. Worse, his Keeneland race showed a horse who's on the decline. One expects to see a running line from the Wood that's humbling for anyone but Bellamy Road, but from the Lexington? If anyone can get this guy into shape it's D. Wayne, but let's face it, he'd have to be a miracle worker for this guy to hit the board. If Orientate couldn't win the Breeders' Cup Classic...

   Greeley's Galaxy won a visually impressive Illinois Derby, but like many others in here, you have to ask who he beat in doing so, compared to some of the others in here; also, while that tactic worked for War Emblem, who got loose on an early lead in 2002, there's no way Greeley's Galaxy gets an early lead in this year's renewal unless Bellamy Road falls asleep in the gate and Spanish Chestnut raises a white flag and concedes before the race is run; probably one of the more quality speed horses in here, but quality likely won't be enough today; pass.

   So, without further ado, the odds line for the win here:

   Bellamy Road 33% (2-1)

   High Fly 20% (4-1)

   Don't Get Mad 11% (8-1)

   Noble Causeway 11% (8-1)

   Bandini 8% (11-1)

   Giacomo 4% (25-1)

   Afleet Alex 4% (25-1)

   Greater Good 3% (33-1)

   Closing Argument 3% (33-1)

   The rest of the pressers 2% (50-1)

   The rest of the early speed horses 1% (99-1)

   WIN BETS: On Bellamy Road at 3-1 or above and High Fly at 6-1 or above.

   EXACTAS: The Bellamy Road – Bandini exacta is tempting, but we're not sure yet. Here's the prices we'll take.

   Bellamy Road – High Fly: $20

   Bellamy Road – Don't Get Mad (or) Bellamy Road – Noble Causeway: $32

   Bellamy Road – Bandini: $38

   Bellamy Road – Afleet Alex: $56

   Bellamy Road – Giacomo: $78

   Bellamy Road – Greater Good (or) Bellamy Road – Closing Argument: $98

   High Fly – Bellamy Road: $37

   for other exactas with High Fly on top, double the prices given with Bellamy Road on top.

   TRIFECTAS: The trifecta will likely be two tickets, both with Bellamy Road on top, then with High Fly in positions two and three, with all other contenders on the line where High Fly is not. For $1 trifecta tickets, this will cost $14.

   SUPERFECTAS: We're not going to swing for the fences here. We're keying Bellamy Road on top, then High Fly and Giacomo in second, third, and fourth, with all other contenders in the other slot. For $1 tickets, our layout will be a total of $18.

   Cheapest Derby in years for yours truly. Which gives me more bankroll to put on the Churchill Downs Handicap. Woo!

   

   posted by slam

   May 5 2005 9:09am
5. 0 likes

   Pastperformances now updated - See Post #1 of this thread

   

   posted by drtnapper07

   May 5 2005 10:00am
6. 0 likes

   Slam, that is an absoluely incredible post,

   I was working on my write-up and after reading yours, my post would just re-iterate several of your points and not even touch many other points that you made -

   I have not made my final picks, but one of my plays since Sunday is

   Bellamy Road over Don't Get Mad in an Exacta. I will have others come Saturday ---

   Again, I highly recommend that everyone take the time and read Slam's post --- Very good information. Thanks Slam.

   - Dirtnapper (Jim)

   

   posted by drtnapper07

   May 5 2005 5:03pm
7. 0 likes

   My first instinct is:

   SUNKING has grteat value @ 15-1....

   Will post my play as early as possible..late Friday or early Sat...

   

   posted by wardawg14522

   May 5 2005 5:14pm
8. 0 likes

   One more day!! Been pumped all week for this. Slam, lot of good info there, thanks. I'm gonna have to disagree with some of your odds there though. No way Afleet Alex should be that high. He is the most consistent fast horse in the field. I have some of the same concerns about him as you but still should be around 6-1. BR 2-1 alright, but only one good race. Before that I think 96 beyer his highest. Might have just developed late but we'll have to see. I agree with High Fly, don't think he'll win but should be there, very consistent. Don't Get Mad, No way 8-1. He has a very slim chance to win this race, possibly a play in exotics. Maybe 50-1, just is not fast enough. If you like him you'll get him at 30-1 probably more. For a long shot (sort of) that I'm really interested in, take a look at Noble Causeway. He has a great slowly developing line that he should improve on. Again don't think he'll win, but should see a solid performance from him. I think you have only four horses that can win this race - AA, BR, Bandini, & HF. One of these four will run that 110 that you are talking about & I don't think any other horse can jump up to that number. The value in this race will be in Exactas & triples. Some long-shots have a chance to get in there. Final plays I'll post later.

   

   posted by kindbud777

   May 6 2005 2:58pm
9. 0 likes

   Great Day,

   Have decided on

   AA w/ NC,HF,& Bandini - Exactas & Triples

   Savers: Ex:BR-AA, & Tri:BR/AA/NC,HF,&Bandini

   GL Everyone

   

   posted by kindbud777

   May 7 2005 11:25am
10. 0 likes

    HERE GOES NOTHING!!!!!!!!

    $2.00 TRIBOX 3-11-15-16

    $2.00 TRIBOX 4-11-12-16

    $2.00 TRIBOX 3-4-11-16

    $2.00 TRIBOX 3-4-12-16

    $10.00 EXBOX 3-4

    $100.00 WIN 3 (SUNKING)

    $312.00 TOTAL WAGER

    

    posted by wardawg14522

    May 7 2005 12:41pm
11. 0 likes

    I'm not playing Belamy Road anywhere except first place.

    Thus with the 16 on top on all bets ...

    16/17

    16/9

    16/17/9

    16/9/17

    16/11/9/17

    16/9/11/17

    Belamy Road will make his great-great grand-daddy proud today.

    PS- His Gr-Gr-Granddaddy is none other than the great Secretariat.

    

    posted by drtnapper07

    May 7 2005 3:56pm
12. 0 likes

    96.00 Tri Box

    High Fly

    Bellamy Road

    Sun King

    Bandini

    50.00 to win on High Fly

    50.00 to win on Bandini

    Just added:

    25.00 on Closing Argument (a donation, but if he beat High Fly this year, I'll give it a whirl)

    25.00 Exacta on High Fly, Consolidated Effort

    Drtnapper..I wanted to thank you (and Slammo and Dawg and others) who spend time on tihs forum. I only bet the ponies on the Triple Crown and Breeders and you guys provide great info and short cuts to look at. Thank you for the hard work..

    GO HIGH FLY!!!

    

    posted by pc7588

    May 7 2005 5:12pm