Derby

[apindy62]

Sierra Leone should have absolutely been disqualified and yes, Forever Young would have won.

FY had a brutal trip and IMO was certainly the best horse on the day, T O Password also had a brutal trip and ran extremely well. Hope the Japanese come back next year with a good one.

[pip4126]

If Bob Baffert trained Sierra Leone do you think he would have been taken down? I vote yes!

[statuette]

If you want to go down that road,bafferts karmas a …

[Roman]

Looks like Catching Freedom is the only horse that ran a new top in the derby, the winner ran an \"off\" race and won due to the insane trip BHJ gave MD.
The other three paired up, and the bottom ten ran the worst race they ever ran.

Just like TG predicted. Pletcher had an awful weekend, even with Mindframe winning. He ran 4 points off his debut.

Finally where did Raging Torrent come from? 8 point new top. One trick pony or can he duplicate that and be a player in the sprint division?

[TreadHead]

its a 6 pt new top from a horse that debuted with an 8, which would lead to expectations that he should get to around 0 someday with normal development.  Hasn\'t had fast dirt to run on for almost 9 months.  Not anywhere near as shocking as the new top Chili Flag ran in the middle of his 5yr old year after having nearly 20 races of performance with very tight variance.

[TGJB]

A few things. First, average development from 2 to 3 is 3 points. Yes, that 8 was early in the year, but precocious horses generally develop less (as discussed re Ways And Means vs Thorpedo Anna).

Second, that Chili Flag race was a BIG problem, and I marked it for review. The choices were either to have the top three (all Chad) run new tops, or have them run their tops and the rest of the race totally collapse, which would be extremely unusual for grass stake horses. Additionally, doing it the other way would have meant adding a lot compared to the other two grass routes (though one was an S Pace race).

There’s a discussion to be had about why so many Derby runners don’t run their races, which I suspect will come up in Preakness conversations. But just to kick things off, compare the times of the first Derby half mile and the last half, and see how the horses that were anywhere near that half mile fraction ran. MD did better than most, and he still ran 3 points off his top.

[Silver Charm]

So Dan paired and thats about right. They had a plan and he was athletic enough to work the Trip.

Kenny was quoted somewhere as saying when they opened up he thought they were going to win by 5. Bodemeister looked the same way. Then those taxing fractions and pedigree set in. He was tired horse after the race. Bouncing up and down or not on tje Track today be dammed

[johnnym]

As far as why horses don’t run there race in the Derby
My personal rabbit holes I went down after this Derby.
1) Is the testing more strict for the derby?
2) Carry more weight and a further distance?
3) Just a sensory overload for some of these herd animals?
4) Trainers pointing for one big effort instead of building a foundation?
5) Horses being over bred (Babies to babies) stamina and durability in the USA a thing of the past?
6) Oh and Pletcher never again!

Bottom line the race is an anomaly and the nut jobs we are live for that race and the big days.
Nurse more meds please.

PS
TO Password ran a hell of a race could only imagine if he won of two races.

[TreadHead]

Appreciate the additional color, but don\'t think any of that changes the original premise of my post, which is that the Chili Flag race result is far more shocking.

a 3yr old sprint horse (with early speed on a speed-favoring track for sprints) running a 6pt top 8 months removed from his top and likely preferred surface may not be \"average\", but is certainly something we see with more regularity than a 5yr old route horse with such a long history of tight performance range suddenly running such a big race.

Even if you end up slowing the race down, his relative performance to all the other horses in the race can\'t change, and at that point you are then making the argument that he is the only horse in that race who \"liked\" that (incredibly aberrant) surface and everyone else hated it so much that most of them backed up significantly.

The Chili Flag effort was much more difficult to predict prior to the race.

[Roman]

#6 made me chuckle. I read an article about speed figs and the derby. JB\'s comments led me to believe that TG was going to toss Fierceness and that the other guys were on Fierceness.

Was a little surprised that Fiercness would not be tossed on the Pletcher factor alone.

And about issue #1, does anyone pay attention to horses shipping from non HISA tracks to one\'s that are under there purview?