New Top to Win the Derby?

[jimbo66]

Spent some time today going through the sheets of previous Derby winners and history says it is a really daunting task to ask a horse to run a new top to win the Derby.

Jerry and others have covered this point before in other threads. However, how the application of this thesis impacts this year\'s derby is interesting.  The figures are pretty spread out.

If the winner will NOT a run new top to win, it really limits the group of potential winners.  With Bellamy at -5, Bandini at -3.25, Afleet Alex at -2 and Greeley\'s Galaxy at -2, and nobody else at a negative number, you could argue that the winner mathematicallly should be one of those 4.  Asking all four of those horses to bounce to positive numbers in the same race and then having a \"1\" from High Fly or Noble Causeway be enough to win the race is very statistically improbable.  I say HF and NC because they have the next highest figures (in routes, Sun King has a \"0\" in a sprint).

It would almost seem you would \"have to\" like one of the top 4, if you are a T-Graph user and you believe that horses typically don\'t run new tops to win in the Derby.

THoughts?

[Ill-bred]

I just went through the archive, and it appears to me that MANY horses have run a new top to win the Derby.

Jimbo, please point out my error if I am reading something wrong.

[BitPlayer]

I\'ve been playing with the Derby archives a bit myself.  The interesting thing is to look, not at the winners, but at the losers.  There have been a lot of horses with competitve tops coming in who ran up the track in the Derby.  Roughly half of the horses in the sample have run at least 3 points worse than their tops.

[flushedstraight]

Good point but I can\'t agree with the expression \"very statistically improbable\".

All four have different probabilities of bouncing and also remember that the best # doesn\'t always translate into winning the race... especially in a 20 horse field.

I\'d say Bandini and GG both have a solid chance at regressions in the derby and it\'s likely that Afleet Alex, even if he pairs up, will not win due to some kind of trouble, whether wide or buried.

No comment on Bellamy Road, except don\'t forget to save with him.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Hard to figure.

Is it tops you\'re looking at or race prior to the Derby? Can you really look back at races even 5 years ago and apply them to factoring this year? Horses are in the \"superfast\" period. Who is comfortable looking at old progressive patterns to figure the winner?

Theres the Killer B\'s to factor. Apparently, they have multiple lengths on the others at 9 marks. Will those margins hold up at 10 marks? Can they possibly repeat negative numbers like that? Are their open daylight margins reliable?

What if the four horses of the apocalypse all regress? They are all coming off Tops, but what if they\'ve all run closer to negative 2 than 6 lengths faster than that? Can a horse like Wilko or High Fly or Noble Causeway leap frog them all on those horses regressing to say Zeds with a slight move forward themselves? Which of the 4 would you think are less prone to regress? Which of them have seen pressure and been professional before?

A new top might win the Derby, but a regression within the 2 point range might too.

[jimbo66]

Ill Bred,

I count 3 horses in the last 11 years that have won the Derby on \"new tops\".  War Emblem, Monarchos and Silver Charm.

I guess 27% is not that small, relatively speaking.  But I would expect the number to be higher.  How many times have we heard before the Derby that a horse was coming into the Derby, \"sitting on a big effort\", or \"ready for a breakout\".  I have heard it a lot.  I guess what I am saying is that most of the time recently, the horses that have won the Derby were already very fast and didn\'t improve in the derby.

[jimbo66]

Flushed Straight.

Let\'s say the following are the chances that the top 4 \"X\" in this race.  I am just picking numbers and I suspect the actual percentages are lower for 3 year olds in May.

Bellamy Road    40%
Afleet Alex     40%
BAndini         40%
Greeley\'s Galxy 40%

The chances of all four \"X\"ing are 2.56%.

I call that \"statistically improbable\", at least in terms of handicapping a horse race.  In terms of other things in life 2.5 percent may be way too probable.

[derby1592]

Jimbo,

Good post.

The tough part this year is that 3 of the 4 fast ones come in off huge new tops and such horses have bounced at a very high rate in past derbies (see a previous post on the topic which would indicate that a 40% chance of bouncing may be much too low) so the \"all 4 of them bounce\" in the Derby outcome is not as improbable as it may seem.

In the past, you could usually assume the winner (and probably the exacta and trifecta) would come out of the top 4 or 5 fastest horses that did not come into the Derby off a big new top in their final prep (Charismatic and Proud Citizen were the 2 exceptions since 1997 that ran well in the Derby off a big jump).

This year, so many had huge final preps and they are so much faster than the rest that it becomes very murky.

As seems to be the case every year in the new millennium, we are once again in uncharted territory for the Derby.

It definitely seems like the top trainers have been purposely trying to save the best effort for Derby day this year (much more so than in the past) with lighter campaigns and very few big efforts in Feb/March. Note that the big final-prep efforts have all been with horses that either urgently needed graded earnings to be assured of making the Derby (e.g., Bandini, Bellamy Road, Greeley\'s Galaxy and Coined Silver) or had to prove they were still sharp and worthy of running in the Derby (i.e., Afleet Alex after his dismal Rebel and supposed lung infection and even Don\'t Get Mad in the Derby Trial on Saturday.)

One interesting contrarian angle worth considering this year is that all of these horses ran their big race one race too soon but that several others that had already punched their ticket to the Derby BEFORE their final prep (and therefore may not have been fully cranked) might return the favor on Derby Day. Some obvious horses on that list could include High Fly, High Limit and Sun King and maybe a few others. If they were not fully cranked then and they are fully cranked on Derby day, why shouldn\'t they be able to turn the tables on Derby day and make the same sort of jump the others may have made one race too early?

High Limit is the most intriguing of the 3 to me. I was surprised when Frankel chose the Blue Grass over the Wood as HL\'s final prep given the short 3-week timing to the Derby. Why would a trainer who has always valued good timing make such a move? It did not make sense to me but just maybe it was because he was not looking for anything near a peak effort in the BG and was treating it strictly as a prep for the Derby. A prep where he could train at CD and not have to ship back and forth out of state and get a nice tightener and pick up a tidy check and maybe even still win – keep in mind that if Bandini had run in the Fla Derby as planned, then High Limit would have been an easy winner in the BG and would be heading into the Derby undefeated and as one of the favorites.

I am not predicting that High Limit or one of the others will jump up in the Derby or even that the trainers/owners in question could have been so patient and single-minded as to send their horses out in prestigious and rich graded prep races significantly less than fully-cranked (seems unlikely) but, what if they did?...it is an interesting angle to ponder.

Good luck.

Chris

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- I covered this in last year\'s Derby, and will go into that in some more about this year\'s-- going to try and write it tonight. But it\'s not just the percentage of winners to look at-- it\'s the small percentage of all Derby entrants that have run new tops.

Your earlier paragraph about only 4 horses being likely winners sounds an awful lot like mw overview from last year...

[jimbo66]

Chris,

You\'ve thrown me for a loop with your contrarian angle.  It makes sense to me.  I have 12 of the 20 horses in my 3rd and 4th slots on my Superfecta ticket and High Limit was one of the 8 I threw out, because I was really disappointed in his Bluegrass race, the way Bandini just rolled by him.  Plus, I figured the pace in the Derby won\'t help him.  He has more than Spanish Chestnut to run with early, he has Bellamy Road.  But you could be right about those horses that already were going to run in the Derby being able to step it up a notch.  You will get overlaid odds on High Limit and Sun King, compared to what they would have gone off at last month.  Less so on High Fly.  


Jerry,

I did buy last year\'s seminar, but I didn\'t intentionally plagiarize you!  It just so happens that 4 of this year\'s horses are a couple points faster than the rest.  (I guess that was the case last year too)

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- you think I\'m worried about someone plagiarizing me on my own site, using my own numbers? (I don\'t know how to do the smiley-face thing).

While I disagree with the percentages (as you said, they were just examples), that percentage of \"X\" post was dead on in the logic department.

[Ill-bred]

OK, I looked at all the \"New Top\" Derby winners since 1982. There\'s 12 of them in 23 runnings (14 if I count Winning Colors and Grindstone, but they improved less than 1 point).

Note the amount olf improvement is usually around 1 to 1 1/2 points. That makes the delta between the Killer Bs and the rest of the pack that much more important.

Winner/Points improved from top

Gato Del Sol 1 1/4 pt move
Sunny\'s Halo 1 1/2
Swale 1
Ferdinand 3
Alysheba 3
Unbridled 4 1/2
Strike the Gold 1
Lil E tee 1
Sea Hero 1 1/2
Silver Charm 2 3/4
Monarchos 1
War Emblem 1 1/2

[gvido]

Ill-bred:

The vast majority of those winners were on an explosive line, fwiw. Not known what was needed to be competitive

A 4,5,6pt top to a 1,0,neg # is a whole lot different than to a 3,4,5. Reaching that threshold can be a killer to many 3yo horses. How they react to the 1st big number is important. Smarty took it all in stride.

BR, will back up at least 3pts. [only horse not to bounce off a -4 or better is Zapper, as 3yo it was last race, 9 months later ran nothing less than -4]

Bandini & Greeleys at least 4+pts [see Ten Most Wanted, Valid Video though both won on the big bounce, lol]

Alex 2+pts.

High Fly pairs or moves forward.

High Limit pairs again or moves forward

Noble C

[HP]

This is the best thread I\'ve read lately...  Last night I was thinking this Derby analysis might make for the title of a new James Brown song...  \"Can I Get A Forward Moving Line?\"  

Seriously though, the fastest horses in here don\'t really have what I would call \"Forward Moving Lines\" coming into the race.  I like Gvido\'s post summing things up, and Chris and Jimbo deserve credit for batting this around.  High Fly is definitely moving up in my estimation, and maybe Frankel knows exactly what he\'s doing with High Limit.  What is being said about Greeley\'s may be true, but he\'s a big price and as the man says, \"you can\'t teach speed.\"  Bandini will be a short price and easier to deal with.  I would think the \"training regimen\" of Afleet Alex is something that will come home to roost more after May 7...  

As for Bellamy Road, man or uberman?  My consultant immediately throws him out!  I\'m not so sure...

You know who has a forward moving line?  Little Wilko!  I remember looking at the figures for the BC Juvenile and then looking at the Racing Form and thinking, \"someone\'s going to run right past them.\"  I picked the wrong Euro, but I wouldn\'t be surprised to see Little Wilko at least in the super.  Bar shoes off?  Come on buddy!  

I told myself I would hold out and not look at this a week ahead of time.  Fat chance.  Can\'t wait to see the toteboard!

HP

[flushedstraight]

Amen. Very anxious to see that toteboard. Will High Limit be 10-1 or 20-1 or more? (or less?) That 93 Beyer will scare many away. The \"poor\" BG effort also validates the \"freak\" La Derby win. I\'m not sure, maybe that\'s the reality of the situation, but it just looks like a bunch of paired up 1s to me.

Didn\'t Thunder Gulch lose as the BG fave and was like 25-1 in the Derby?

After being favored in all his starts, is High Limit being abandoned? Does it matter he\'s been training with the fastest horse on the planet? Doesn\'t his hall of fame trainer, who has accomplished just about everything else, really want to win this thing? Didn\'t the much maligned Empire Maker step up huge with the addition of blinkers in his 3rd (maybe 2nd?) start at 3?

Despite only having the 4 starts and several in here already run faster, he might be one of the value keys to the exotics if he indeed is overlooked. A top 3 (or 4) finish does not seem like a stretch, assuming agreement with the excellent analysis above by HP,gvido & derby1592.

Ramon still flies under the radar on the big stage. Maybe we were all too disgusted with Jamie Spencer to notice who was in the winners circle last October. I was. Is 25-1 a possibility? Naaaaa, but maybe?