Refining the Entry List
Steven Crist supports a points system for Kentucky Derby entries, writing in his DRF+ column:
You can’t mandate that tracks standardize purses to match up to grades, but a point system rather than an earnings tally could effectively accomplish that — something like 9, 6, and 3 points for the first three finishers in a Grade 1 race, 6-4-2 for a Grade 2, and 3-2-1 for a Grade 3 would be more fair than the current earnings system. This also opens the possibility of weighting 3-year-old races more strongly than 2-year-old races instead of giving horses as much credit for irrelevant sprint performances eight months before post time as for routes in their final prep.
At first this might seem complicated, but it really is more straightforward than the earnings system, which is riddled with inequities not only in gross purses but in state-to-state variations on purse splits and added monies. A point system would actually simplify things.
Patrick’s a couple steps ahead: Here’s what a points-based list would look like for this year’s Derby.
