Large Derby Fields and Churchill Specs Hurt Rail Horse

[bobphilo]

During a segment on post positions of the TV Derby coverage they showed that, with the way the starting gates are positioned, even if the #1 horse was able to maintain a straight path despite all the pressure from the outside, he would still run into the rail at the point where the chute joined the main track. That means that he would have to move at least part of that mountain of horseflesh bearing in on him out a few feet to avoid disaster. That would explain the dread that most trainers have of the rail draw – think Baffert and Lookin At Lucky

What seems odd, however, is that every statistical study of Derby post positions done by myself or others indicates that the #1 post has both the highest win % and the highest % of horses starting from this post that win. Until I saw this TV report I believed that this fear of the #1 post was mostly a phobia in the face of the data, but this new info justified another look to clear up this apparent contradiction.

I believe the problem with these studies was that, in order to get a sample of races large enough to be significant, they have to go back to many previous runnings. Though we tend to associate the huge 20 horse fields with this race, this is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. In the long 136-year history of the Derby, smaller fields, requiring only one starting gate, were more typical. Could these studies be skewed in favor of the rail horse by including races run in the days of smaller fields run from one gate and not reflect the problems faced by current horses that draw #1?

When the larger fields mandated the use of an additional gate I believe this created a problem since the 2 gates would not even fit across the narrow track. I confirmed this by reviewing the video of the race start which shows that the starting chute is actually flared out from the main track so that both gates fit. While both the inside and outside post lead to the inner and outer rails respectively, this is a far lesser problem for the #20 since the horses bear to the inside after the break, creating the dilemma for the #1 horse on the inside.

I haven't seen studies of Derby post position win % for races run out of 2 gates compared to one, but I would strongly suspect that the win % of horses starting from the #1 post would be significantly lower due to the gate position that 2 gates necessitates. To be precise, one would have to correct for the fact that larger fields will automatically lower the win # of all horses in general, but in any case I think that the #1 post will still show this disadvantage. I'm tempted to do such a study myself, time permitting.

At first I thought that the this problem for the rail horse could be solved by just moving out the starting gate, but the real problem seems that the huge fields we see in modern Derbies are just too large for the track as it is built. Yet another argument for limiting the Derby field to the sane number of qualified horses that could fit in one starting gate, but that's a topic for another thread.

Bob

[smalltimer]

And yet, the #2 horse has hit the super for 5 straight years.

[bobphilo]

smalltimer Wrote:
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> And yet, the #2 horse has hit the super for 5
> straight years.

No surprise there. All the studies show the inner posts tend to be better. The #2 post is as close to the inside that you can get without the problems of the #1 horse of being put into the rail right after the start.