The ‘Key Race’ and the Kentucky Derby
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.
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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:
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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:
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| (Click on image to enlarge) |
