Showing posts with label 2014 Kentucky Derby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014 Kentucky Derby. Show all posts

  • California Chrome Proves the Race is Not Always to the Swift

    POSTED May 9, 2014 By Derek Simon

    I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: racing fans are a fickle bunch. Win in a fast time, à la Game On Dude in the Santa Anita Handicap, and it’s because of a “souped-up” racetrack or a “speed bias.” Win in a slow time, à la California Chrome in the Kentucky Derby, and it’s due to a slow pace and/or a subpar three-year-old crop.

    Look, there’s no denying that California Chrome’s Derby time was on the sluggish side. Since 1950, only Cannonade (1974) recorded a slower winning time on a “fast” track than trainer Art Sherman’s stable star did on the first Saturday in May. 

     And the speed-figure boys concur with the Teletimer.

    Len Ragozin of The Sheets gave Chrome a 7 ¼ — just slightly better than Cannonade’s 8 (lower numbers represent faster times on both The Sheets and Jerry Brown’s Thoro-Graph).

    Brisnet awarded California Chrome a 103 speed figure (well below the 10-year Derby par of 107), while Beyer and his team gave the son of Lucky Pulpit a 97 — the lowest figure for a Derby or Preakness winner since the Beyer figs were first published in the Daily Racing Form in 1992.

    In fact, Beyer was so distressed by Chrome’s lack of speed that he condemned the entire thoroughbred breed.

    “This slow time is not merely an indication the current crop of 3-year-olds is subpar; it can be seen as an indictment of the modern American thoroughbred,” Beyer wrote in the Washington Post immediately after the Derby.

    Now, I’m not a Beyer basher; in truth, I think he has a point (albeit one better made by the Belmont Stakes, in which no winner has cracked the 2:30 mark since 2009). Still, isn’t the angst a bit much?

    After all, I remember reading the same type of stuff about Triple Crown champ Seattle Slew. Only three horses — the aforementioned Cannonade (1974), Canonero II (1971) and Dust Commander (1970) — recorded slower winning times in the Kentucky Derby in the 15 years preceding Slew’s victory in 1977. And Dust Commander competed on an “off” track.

    What’s more, there is no evidence to suggest that a fast Derby time — at least a fast raw Derby time — leads to future success… quite the contrary, actually.

    Of the 20 swiftest fast-track Kentucky Derby winners (based on raw times), only seven found similar success in Baltimore in the Preakness Stakes, producing a $1.64 net return on a $2 investment. In all other fast-track Derbies, the winner went on to capture the Black-eyed Susans 40 percent of the time and return backers a robust 25 cents on the dollar.

    QUICKEST FAST-TRACK DERBY WINNERS IN THE PREAKNESS

    Number: 20
    Winners: 7
    Rate: 35.0%
    Return: $32.70
    $2 Net: $1.64
    ROI: -18.3%

    ALL OTHER “FAST” TRACK DERBY WINNERS IN THE PREAKNESS

    Number: 37
    Winners: 15
    Rate: 40.5%
    Return: $92.80
    $2 Net: $2.51
    ROI: +25.4%

    As for the “slow” pace… well, that’s hooey too. According to my pace figures, several recent editions of the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports have featured softer relative opening splits — like the 2008 edition, the 2009 edition and the 2011 edition.

    Furthermore, California Chrome’s -7 early speed ration (ESR) in this year’s Run for the Roses is the third-best since 1996, behind only Smarty Jones (-9 in 2004) and Funny Cide (-7 in 2003).

    Both those horses went on to win the Preakness Stakes.

    Is California Chrome the greatest racehorse to ever look through a bridle? Of course not. But he’s not exactly Zippy Chippy either… regardless of what one’s watch says.



  • Kentucky Derby Turnoffs

    POSTED Apr 24, 2014 By Derek Simon
    I have often discussed how important it is that a horse show the ability to gain ground on the turn in Kentucky Derby preps, à la Animal Kingdom in the 2011 Spiral.

    (Click on image to enlarge)

    In that Grade III event, the son of Leroidesanimaux passed three horses and gained two lengths en route to a 2 ¾-length score.

    Six weeks later, he was having his picture taken in the Churchill Downs’ winner’s circle.

    Just as important as positive moves, however, are negative ones.

    What’s the difference, you ask? Well, a positive move is any gain of running position and lengths (the latter stipulation helps to ensure that the move was due to the horse accelerating rather than just picking up stragglers) on the far turn, while a negative move is just the opposite — a loss of both position and lengths on the far turn.

    For the sake of simplicity, I consider the far turn to be the span between the first and second call in routes and the span between the second call and the stretch call in sprints. (Obviously, prepping for the Kentucky Derby in a sprint race raises other issues… but it has happened.)

    Take a peek at horses that showed a negative move on the turn in their last race prior to the Derby:

    (Click on image to enlarge)

    Simply put, these horses just don’t perform in Louisville. Not only are they 0-for-29 since 1992, only two — Menifee (in 1999) and Pioneerof the Nile (2009) — have so much as hit the board.

    So, without further ado, here are the potential “turnoffs” in Kentucky Derby 140:

    Horses that lost position and lengths from the first call to the second call in their final prep

    * Dance with Fate
    * Vinceremos
    * Coastline
    * In Trouble
    * Casiguapo

  • The ‘Key Race’ and the Kentucky Derby

    POSTED Apr 20, 2014 By Derek Simon
    Many moons ago, in his master work “Betting Thoroughbreds,” Steve Davidowitz coined the term “key race” to describe a race that featured an inordinate number of next-out winners. According to Davidowitz, these winners are generally not coincidental. 

    “Either [the key race] was superior to the designated class or else it contained an unusually fit group of horses. In either case, that’s important information,” the author wrote.

    Apparently the Daily Racing Form agreed, as that esteemed publication soon began italicizing the names of next-out winners in its result charts and past performances.

    Yet, by its very nature, the Key Race Method suffers from one very large and significant drawback: typically, by the time an event can confidently be deemed a key race it has lost its value as a predictive tool. After all, what good is it to discover a particularly strong race after half a dozen horses have already won their next start? Not only that, but given how infrequently horses compete today, it can take many weeks or even months to determine whether a past contest qualifies as a key race.

    Hence, I decided to come up with a method of assessing key races that doesn’t require validation after the fact. Like Davidowitz’s initial technique, however, I wanted to keep it simple, so that even novice horseplayers could judge the merits of a particular race with just a modicum of time and effort.

    Here’s how it works:

    A)  Using the result chart from a horse’s last race, find the median finishing position for all the entrants in their prior race. This information can be found in the leftmost column following the (abbreviated) track name. For example, by examining the chart below, one will discover that On Lockdown finished fifth in his last race, which was run at Oaklawn Park (OP) on March 15, 2012.

    Note: For those who don’t have kids in school, the median is simply the middle value of an ordered array of numbers. If the array is even, it is the average of the two values closest to the middle.  

    B)  Divide the number of entrants, or the field size, by the figure obtained above to get the key race Rating.

    (Click on image to enlarge)

    That’s all there is to it; the higher the rating, the better the race was for the class. Notice I said “for the class.” Keep in mind that these key race ratings need to be viewed in light of the overall level of the race. A high rating in a $15,000 claiming event does not make a horse a contender against a rival that earned a much lower figure in a Grade I affair — it’s just common sense.  However, in races featuring horses that last raced against similar competition, the ratings can be invaluable.

    For the Kentucky Derby, I came up with a grading system (below) to address this problem:


    The last horse to win the Kentucky Derby after exiting a race with an “F” grade was Strike the Gold in 1991.

    Here are the grades of the major preps in 2014:

    (Click on image to enlarge)