Derby Preps
So-So Prospects
A couple of years ago, I was listening to one of the Road to the Roses teleconferences hosted by the NTRA each spring. Trainer Todd Pletcher was taking questions. In February, a well-bred 3-year-old from his barn had won a grass race impressively at Gulfstream, briefly sparking Kentucky Derby talk. A reporter asked about the colt. Pletcher replied, “Who?”
It was funny, but as I listened to the trainer smoothly make up for his startled first response, I realized he had said everything about how he perceived the colt’s potential, and it wasn’t anything to look forward to on the Derby Trail.
I was reminded of that call yesterday after Brethren won the Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs by four lengths as the 4-5 favorite. The final time was 1:45.07, for which Brethren was given a Beyer speed figure of 83. DRF Formulator gives his fractions as a steady :24+ per split. His final sixteenth was :6.87, and the way he drew off in the stretch was visually impressive.
For Pletcher, it was his fourth Davis win in five years, a Tampa record, but the trainer wasn’t in the winner’s circle. He watched the race from Gulftream, where he had two horses entered on Saturday afternoon, both in claiming races. “Obviously we have some things to work on at the gate but all in all I thought it was a great effort,” Pletcher told Mike Welsch.
A great effort isn’t Who?, and the trainer may not have been at Tampa for several reasons. Yet I’m getting a sense that, as a Kentucky Derby prospect, Brethren isn’t one to get too excited* about this season.
Mike Watchmaker has a less subjective reason to question Brethren’s Derby potential: “Brethren’s profoundly pedestrian preliminary Beyer of 83 in the Davis didn’t even match the pair of 84’s he earned last year.” The handicapper wasn’t any more impressed with the other two preps on Saturday, and Brad Free reports pessimism at Santa Anita after Tapizar’s dismal run.
Beyer speed figures of 93 and 90 for Silver Medallion in the El Camino Real at Golden Gate and Anthony’s Cross in the Robert B. Lewis at Santa Anita. Charts and replays via the updated Kentucky Derby prep schedule.
First-round Triple Crown nominations are out. Search the 364 nominees.
*The one everyone is excited about worked this morning. Uncle Mo breezed four furlongs in :47.45 in company with Stay Thirsty at Palm Meadows. “It was a tad quicker than we expected. We wanted him to go in :48 and change, but he did it effortlessly,” said Pletcher of the move.
Friday Notes
It’s mid-February, the weekend of Sam and Bob, the weekend Derby preps get serious. Forgive the plug, but if you’re looking for analysis of Kentucky Derby and Oaks preps this spring, consider signing up for the weekly Hello Race Fans! Derby Prep Alert, which this week covers the Sam F. Davis at Tampa, the Robert B. Lewis at Santa Anita, and El Camino Real at Golden Gate. Subscribers last week were tipped off to Zazu’s upset potential in the Las Virgenes.
I’ve been a little preoccupied this week (to readers who are not Suffolk Downs fans, my thanks for sticking around through what’s been a series of minutiae-filled posts about a track on the ropes), and haven’t done much more than glance at the entries for the preps — enough to notice that Jaycito isn’t in the Lewis, a race in which Tapizar seems a solid favorite — and to skim Jeremy Plonk’s exhaustive Countdown to the Crown column, which mentions a few allowance races that bear watching for Derby prospects. [Jaycito will start in the San Vicente on February 20. “He’s ready to go,” said trainer Bob Baffert.]
Suffolk certainly isn’t the only racetrack struggling, and that it’s my local track isn’t all that makes the dispute with the New England horsemen over the 2011 meet purses, days, and simulcasting split so fascinating to me — it’s also that what’s happening here is of a piece with what’s happening in California, where annual handle is down and horseplayers are revolting. It’s all part of the Great American Racing Contraction, a reapportionment of power and money that isn’t going to leave a track, horseman, or horseplayer untouched.
Saturday Notes
The Factor is back in training after missing three days due to a foot bruise. “He had a little setback,” said trainer Bob Baffert, noting that the San Vicente Stakes on February 20 is still a possibility for the 3-year-old colt. But the Kentucky Derby may not be, reports Brad Free. After setting a main track record at six furlongs winning a maiden special on opening day at Santa Anita, The Factor didn’t work again for three weeks. “I will not fry him to make the Derby,” said the trainer. Baffert has other Derby prospects, including one he thinks quite well of, tweeted Sid Fernando:
Bob Baffert’s best Derby hope he just told me is Jay. “He’s by Victory Gallop, who beat me w Real Quiet. The mother Fu*ker owes me,” he said
Jay = Jaycito, the Norfolk Stakes winner moved into Baffert’s barn from trainer Mike Mitchell’s shedrow by owner Ahmed Zayat last fall (with the Derby in mind). Since the start of the year, he’s worked four times, most recently going seven furlongs in 1:25.20 at Santa Anita, and could start in the Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn on February 21. Despite blowing the turn into the backstretch during last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (in which he finished seventh, 16 lengths off Uncle Mo), the Victory Gallop colt is one of my early Derby favorites, largely on the strength of his for-the-distance pedigree.
In case anyone was wondering about BC Juvenile fourth-place finisher Biondetti as a Derby prospect, the Downey Profile reports that they contacted Godolphin and confirmed that the Bernardini 3-year-old will not be prepping for the first Saturday in May. “He will return to Europe for a summer campaign” (scroll down to the news for Thursday, February 3).
There aren’t enough 3-year-olds to fill races at the Fair Grounds. The Louisiana route to the Derby, which Jason Shandler argues has become less relevant in recent years, is a lot less crowded without trainer Steve Asmussen.
A third claim of copyright violation kills the Partymanners YouTube channel, an incredible source of race replays. Jim Conti, aka Partymanners, said on PaceAdvantage that the video files were mostly backed up and will be uploaded to a second account. Which is … good? When the account was suspended last year, users rallied to save the videos, headed by Thorobase developer Robin Howlett. That’s one reason Conti will be able to restore the channel, but I hope he’ll reconsider where. For all the benefits of the service, posting the replays on YouTube again raises the possibility that new copyright claims will result in another takedown, depriving fans of a valuable resource.
Randy Cohen is out as the New York Times magazine Ethicist columnist, Ariel Kaminer is in, and the only reason I mention the moves is because there’s an unexpected Railbird connection to both. Way back in 2004, when I was a new handicapper, I wrote to Cohen asking about the ethics of betting on horses that may have been mistreated (he thought it best not); last year, I visited NYC OTB parlors with Kaminer as she researched a City Critic column.
Where They Prepped
With Uncle Mo back in training (the early Derby favorite breezed three furlongs in 39:95 at Palm Meadows this morning) and the Holy Bull Stakes (last Derby winner, Barbaro ’06) kicking off Gulfstream’s Derby prep series this afternoon, it seemed a good time to look back at the stakes in which the top three Kentucky Derby finishers of the last 10 years prepped (wins are bolded in the spreadsheet below). Considering how much prep schedules and training regimens have changed in just the past decade, it’s practically quaint that there was a time a Derby prospect could start in both the Wood Memorial and the Florida Derby, as did 2003 runner-up Empire Maker and 2001 winner Monarchos. And the Tampa Bay Derby, run in March, has become such a key prep, it’s surprising that its rise only dates back to Bluegrass Cat in 2006.
It was Street Sense, though, who in 2007 elevated the Tampa Bay Derby into a race that trainer Todd Pletcher is now seriously considering for Uncle Mo’s first start of the year. Street Sense won at Tampa, then lost the Blue Grass, and is one of six Kentucky Derby winners of the past 10 years who didn’t win his final prep. Of the four who did, three were undefeated going into the Derby, including Smarty Jones, who in 2004 was the first undefeated winner of the Kentucky Derby since Seattle Slew in 1977. Barbaro accomplished the same feat in 2006, then Big Brown did in 2008. Since 2001, there have been five unbeaten horses among 188 Derby starters — the three Derby winners already mentioned, plus Curlin in 2007 (he finished third), and Showing Up in 2006 (sixth). Make of this what you will: As Derby prospects make fewer starts, and their spots are more carefully chosen, there’s a greater chance an undefeated horse (or horses) will enter the Derby. And yet, a record of three wins and four in-the-money finishes from five such starters isn’t to be dismissed.
Related: Historical criteria and Derby winners’ prep schedules, 1998-2010.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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