Kentucky Derby
2019 Kentucky Derby
Prep schedule: Includes leaderboard, charts, replays, speed figures
I Take the One Less Traveled By
With less than three weeks to go, Bellamy Road is far and away the Kentucky Derby favorite thanks to his eye-popping, jaw-dropping, 17 1/2 length, record-setting, 120 Beyer figure Wood Memorial win.
That was a pretty good performance.
But the Kentucky Derby isn’t a six furlong sprint with a short field; to the fastest goes the roses isn’t a rule. As Michael Hammersly points out in the Daily Racing Form — sub. req.:
The [best last race Beyer] guarantees you nothing, good or bad. Big figs have gone into the Derby and lost; big figs have gone into the Derby and won. It might mean only that a horse is a good horse, capable of big thing.
There’s also the matter of his inexperience — Bellamy Road has had only five races, in which he’s won four, three of those wire-to-wire — and even with a four week layoff, he can’t escape the specter of bounce. These are objections serious enough that I’ll pass on hopping the Bellamy bandwagon. He’s unquestionably a top five Derby prospect, but he’s no sure thing. I’ll take Afleet Alex, Bandini, and Noble Causeway ahead of George Steinbrenner’s freaky little colt.
Related: “Can Afleet Alex beat Bellamy Road on Derby day? Absolutely,” says Bob Neumeier. (MSNBC)
More Derby news …
Anyone But Rose
Rather, no one but Rose! Yay to Tim Ritchey and Cash Is King for making the decision to keep jockey Jeremy Rose on Afleet in Alex in the Kentucky Derby. (And thanks to Jolene at Oregon Racing News for passing along the link from Blood-Horse this evening.)
More: “Jeremy is absolutely thrilled,” said Kid Breeden, Rose’s agent. “He’s very happy. Make that, extremely happy.” (News Journal)
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That seems to be the thinking of trainer Tim Ritchey and Cash Is King partnership when it comes to naming a jockey to ride Afleet Alex in the Kentucky Derby:
Although Jeremy Rose rode Afleet Alex in the Arkansas Derby, and has never finished worse than second on the colt, Ritchey would not commit to Rose for the Derby. It seems Ritchey and the Cash Is King partnership which owns Afleet Alex will reach out to several better-known riders first. As of now, jockeys such as Corey Nakatani, Alex Solis, and Patrick Valenzuela don’t have commitments. Gary Stevens is not available because he will ride Noble Causeway, trainer Nick Zito said. Edgar Prado had been riding both Noble Causeway and Sun King, and chose to remain with Sun King.
“We have a couple of different options, and Jeremy is definitely one of them,” Ritchey said. “We’ve just got to think about what we’re going to do, and what’s best for the horse.” (Daily Racing Form)
Rose, to his credit, is handling the question of whether he or another jockey will ride Alex in the Derby with grace and professionalism:
A team player, he stood with his back to the dark racetrack and answered the question with: “If they name me on, they name me on.” (Arkansas News Service)
Afleet Alex’s first place finish in the Arkansas Derby was Rose’s 48th win at Oaklawn this meet, earning him the track’s riding title.
Two Very Satisfying Results
Bandini wins the Blue Grass Stakes, Afleet Alex the Arkansas Derby, both with brilliant performances.
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What I like about both the Blue Grass and the Arkansas Derby is that there are no questions attached to the winners — there were no sloppy tracks, no shocking performances, no concerns about the quality of the fields. Bandini did come in slowly, running the last eighth in :13.4, and the race’s final time was 1:50.16, hardly the speediest prep race we’ve seen, but the way he took the lead in the stretch was commanding and in keeping with the improvement he’s shown in each race this year. Afleet Alex was considerably zippier, making it to the wire in 1:48.8, running the final eighth in :11.7, proving that his poor performance in the Rebel was legitimately due to a lung infection and dispelling any doubts about his ability around two turns.
The biggest disappointment of the day was Sun King, who ran fourth in the Blue Grass. Blood-Horse reports that a dismayed Nick Zito “criticized Sun King’s jockey, Edgar Prado, saying he didn’t follow instructions. ‘I told him to make a left turn and try to save some ground, as much as you can, and we’ll take our chances with him,’ Zito said. ‘He never saved an inch of ground. I guess he couldn’t get over. I don’t know. He was so wide.'” Prado blamed the horse.
There is one question hanging over yesterday’s results — will Jeremy Rose keep the mount on Afleet Alex? Trainer Tim Ritchey squirmed when asked this in an interview following the race. “Who knows,” he said. “We just want to enjoy the moment right now.”
Fresh Horses
Bobby Frankel addresses the fad for fewer preps and fresh horses going into this year’s Derby:
Everything has changed and the reason it has changed is because obviously what we’re doing now works. So what we did in the past, it was great then, but now we’ve figured out that having your horses fresh and everything for these kind of races, that they run their best races. But the negative part about it is when you run them so fresh and they run so hard like, well, it’s like [Nick’s] or maybe our — my horse will run in the Bluegrass like that or something like that, the negative part is that they’re subject to bouncing a lot easier than a horse that’s been having steadier races and more races and having a better foundation.
Â
So there’s a [definite] negative, but to get your ultimate performance out of a horse, I think running them fresh in these races is the way to go…. [Charlie Winningham — sic] got me to do it, to be honest with you, and I did it one step further where I run them even fresher than he does now. So other people watch me do [inaudible] running horses off for three, four months and they run great, so they start doing it…. The reason I gave my horse five weeks off the Louisiana Derby was because he hadn’t run in four or five months, so I’m hoping that time in between and I try to train him fairly hard so he wouldn’t — so he’ll have some sort of foundation and — he’s going to be 100 percent fit, my horse, for this race and hopefully, he doesn’t have two separate races and he can come back in three weeks. (NTRA)
The fresh horse theory of training seems to work if your horse has to race no more than once a month, and preferably, no more than once every six to eight weeks. What happens though, if the winner of the Kentucky Derby is a lightly raced horse such as High Limit or Bellamy Road, and he tries to come back three weeks later and win the Preakness? And then, two weeks later, the Belmont? We may not see a Triple Crown winner until this penchant for long layoffs passes.
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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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