Derby Prospects
2019 Kentucky Derby
Prep schedule: Includes leaderboard, charts, replays, speed figures
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.
The Triple-Digits
Dick Jerardi surveys this year’s 3-year-old division and finds it fast:
What we know is that we already have five 3-year-olds that have hit triple digits and more that are closing in on the magic number.
Last year’s lack of big Beyers three months from the Derby was a tip-off to an underwhelming Triple Crown season. There are no promises in this game, but there is at least promise at this stage.
By the Beyer speed figures, you have to go back to 2007 to find sophomores as promising in February and March. That year’s Kentucky Derby included Street Sense, Hard Spun, Any Given Saturday, and eventual HOTY Curlin.
Sadler’s Year?
Trainer John Sadler is hardly unknown. Steadily climbing the rankings over the past decade, he’s been among the top 10 conditioners nationally by earnings since 2008, and six weeks into this year, he’s number four, behind perennial leaders Asmussen, Baffert, and Pletcher. On opening day at Santa Anita, he won three graded stakes. This past weekend, he won three of the four graded stakes run at the track — the Strub Stakes with Twirling Candy (“possesses an undeniable brilliance,” gushed Mike Watchmaker), the Las Virgenes with Zazu (Green but Game’s expert pick and newest crush), and the San Antonio Handicap with Gladding. With 4-year-old stakes winners Switch and Sidney’s Candy also in his barn, the Santa Anita press office calculates that he has “serious contenders … in no less than six of racing’s divisions.” Not bad. While Sadler isn’t well stocked in racing’s glamour division — his most promising 3-year-old male so far this winter is Runflatout, a debut maiden winner — with three of the best older horses in training, he seems poised to have the kind of breakout year that leads to an Eclipse Award.
Hold off on adding Cal Nation to your Kentucky Derby top 10:
“Cal Nation came out of his race well,” said Pletcher of the 3-year-old Distorted Humor colt who was impressive in breaking his maiden at first asking in Saturday’s eighth race [at Gulfstream]. “It’s a little late [for him to get onto the Kentucky Derby trail]. We’d have to make up a lot of time. I think we’ll just take the conservative route with him.”
Kentucky Derby and Oaks prep schedules updated: Beyer speed figures of 88 for Toby’s Corner in the Whirlaway and Zazu in the Las Virgenes.
Brad Free was out with an interesting post on Santa Anita’s new dirt surface over the weekend: “No one wants to knock the surface. Not publicly, at least. But behind the scenes, many are frustrated.” For whatever reason, the track composition is not as as expected; more sand is to be added. Via Derby List comes this report of bruising clods being thrown up by the dirt: “I had the misfortune of being behind one horse while working a set 2 mornings ago …
2/9/11 Addendum: Sadler tells Jay Privman that Runflatout is possible for the San Vicente Stakes on February 20. “I want to give him a chance to get to the Kentucky Derby, but I want to be smart, too, about how we go at it.”
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.
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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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