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
