Preakness Performance and (Lack of) TG Improvement

[Molesap]

Not sure anyone will find this too interesting or useful, but I read an article that said of the past 23 winners of the Kentucky Derby, 16 had their top Beyer in the Derby, while 7 regressed from their top Beyer number. While 4 of the top Beyer Derby horses went on to win the Preakness (16-4-4-3), 6 of the horses with a Beyer regression went on to win the Preakness as well compiling a record of 7-6-1-0. That is a fairly interesting stat to me â€" if you were good enough to win the Derby while your Beyer regressed, you were very likely to win the Preakness. So off to the archives I went to see if that were true for the TG numbers in the Derby.

There were only three horses since 1982 that had a regression from their top TG number and were still able to win the Derby. Those three were Sunday Silence (regressed 2 points), Fusaichi Pegasus (regressed half a point) and Smarty Jones (regressed 2 points). Their Preakness record is a combined 3-2-1-0. Nice trend, but certainly not enough data points to make any type of inference. So I then looked at any horse that did not improve their top by at least one point â€" meaning they did not improve by a point or more. For instance, going from a 5 to a 4 would not make the group as it just missed the cutoff. Using this criterion, the sample size went to 15 horses and has the added relevance that Justify improved his top by half a point in the Kentucky Derby, so he would fit into this group. I had to toss two horses as they did not run in the Preakness after the Derby. Spend A Buck skipped the Preakness to take a shot at that $2.3 million bonus offered by Garden State â€" a race in which he won, but since it was not the Preakness, he was excluded from the analysis. The other horse that was excluded was Grindstone as he was retired a few days after his Derby win. That left 13 horses including the three already mentioned since they did not improve more than point as they regressed. These 10 additional horses are Winning Colors, Go For Gin, Thunder Gulch, Real Quiet, Charismatic, Funny Cide, I’ll Have Another, Orb, California Chrome, and Nyquist. Collectively, they have an impressive record of 13-7-2-3-1 with only Orb failing to hit the trifecta in the Preakness. As a side note, there were 11 horses that won the Preakness after winning the Derby since 1982 (the first year of the archives), so four did win after improving their Beyer by a point or more. Those are Alysheba, War Emblem, Big Brown, American Pharoah â€" so it is not an essential requirement to improve by less than a point and repeat in the Preakness.

Not sure how much to make out of it as it is still a small sample size, but as previously mentioned, Justify improved his TG number by half a point, so he fits in the above group. Seems like a fairly strong trend that if you are good (lucky?) enough to win the Derby without having to improve your top, you have a much better chance of repeating in the Preakness.

[JR]

The biggest knock, and maybe the only knock against Justify is the 5 races in 13 weeks.

[Marlin]

Save your powder, as Big Sandy is waiting in the weeds for this one.

[JR]

There might not be a big sandy in his future. Get him now or never.