Race Spacing before derby - Spiral aftermath

[tread]

Wow, what a great race the Spiral was, I am mad as hell at myself for not making the journey down there to see it.  RequestFP really impressed me, what a gutty horse, but Jerry already said it best, he is not the right type for the derby.  He has had a tough campaign already, I don\'t see anyway he can carry it all the way thru to CD.  He could run well in the Bluegrass if they choose that, because Keenland is also an extreme speed favoring surface.

Perfect Drift was impressive, the only off the pace winner on the entire card, raced against an enourmous speed bias.  Reminded me of Alannan winning at Keenland last spring against a huge bias and then he came back to run huge on the derby undercard at a big price.  The biggest problem here is the spacing for PD, sounds like the connections want to run him again before the derby.  This will by mean by Derby time a stretch of 4-5 races with only 3 weeks rest in between.  This could be a problem, but we will have to wait and see how stressful the last prep is.

Azillion was also impressive and appears to have more potential, I don\'t count him out yet either, but there are the same questions with race spacing coming in.  My favorite spacing line is being taken by those horses who are racing on April 6, a nice month to train up to the derby.  Horses I rank as contenders racing that day are Repent, USSTinosa, and TB Derby winner Equalize.  Saarland races the next week, but should be OK for the derby off 3 weeks given that he will not have had a taxing spring.  Not a whole lot else I can see coming out of the April 13 races, there will lots of pretenders I\'m sure, but not horses that will be ready for their best effort come May 4.

I keep hearing in the press about no horse winning the derby off 6 weeks rest in 50 years or something.  Is this really a big problem, is it that tough to keep a horse fit?  I would much rather see Perfect Drift and Azillion train up to the derby, but that\'s not likely to happen given the lures of large purses in these derby preps.  Time will tell....

[TGJB]

I agree with pretty much everything you said about spacing. The issue about layoffs right before the Derby is something I have debated with Elliot- I think that is simply because trainers with top horses haven\'t tried it much.

[Mall]

If you\'re mad at yourself TH, just think how mad I am. Here you are a mere stone\'s throw away from TP & you leave it up to me to travel 100s of miles after a bitter Panther defeat to see the race in person. Your reluctance to leave HQs wouldn\'t have anything to do with the twin, blond playboy bunny-like vixens who do the Beulah simul show, would it? They are the subject of much discussion & rumor at simuls everywhere, yet it\'s funny that you\'ve never gotten around to mentioning them. What gives?

[tread]

I actually don\'t make it down to Beulah much at all, I can\'t stand that place. I\'ve spoiled myself by going to opening day at Del Mar every year.  I do much of my wagering from home.  

Yes, the twins are very hot, but very short, I prefer tall women.  One of them is married and has a kid.  Incidentally, there was an on-line Playboy article about them that was posted about 18 months ago.  I don\'t think it\'s still there, but there was a pictorial and everything.  They wore bikinis and took shots at various places around the track.  My favorie was them in purple bikinis and black heels standing on the jockey\'s scale.  Go to the beulah website, they have a fan club.  Sorry, I\'m not a member so I\'m not sure what the benefits are

[Mall]

How can you fault the twins for being vertically challenged? Even more perplexing is the fact that you are not a founding member of their fan club, which offers \"more info\" on the twins, photo archives, \"special\" members-only offers, a chance to vote for Katie in the 2002 Sexiest in Columbus Contest,etc. I hope you don\'t mind that I signed you up to receive the twins\' email newsletter.

You also get direct e-mail access to both twins, with the admonition to \"Please be kind\", something which might go a long way on this Bd. Boy do I wish I had never asked, simply out of curiousity, how the seminar went.

[fastspeed]

I\'ve always been amazed at the significant differences in racing between US and UK and this prep/spacing issue has always puzzled me.  When I was in London it was commonplace to go to big races with 1 (maybe 2) prep races - in fact (slight digression) for some of the big steeplechase races it was not uncommon for horses to go best fresh (at 3 miles !).  I know most of the trainers used pretty scary hills (and interval training) to get horses fit - and I don\'t know enough about US training methods to tell if that is a difference. Certainly the myth of 3 prep races has trainers hooked and that in itself builds the case.  It has to be said that Godolphin (with the UK influence) has been going to CD on less than 3 preps and has not had success - though that may be down to the horses they sent there.  Michael Dickinson was an innovator in his time in the UK, with uphill interval training being big for him I believe.  It shows here in the US in that you always know a MD horse is going to be fit fresh - if he ever got a Derby horse I would guess he would go the derby on a light schedule.  A lot of words to say that 16/1 on 2-prep Saarland (William Hill International) may be juicy after all.

[derby1592]

When looking at the spacing of Derby Preps, you have to put all this into historical context and recognize that the recent trend has been to run fewer 3yo preps and allow more time between the final Derby prep and the Derby. Perhaps the sheets philosophy has had a big influence on this change or perhaps the ease of shipping cross-country is the major driver or perhaps both or neither. I am not sure. Less than 20 years ago, it was not unusual to see a lot of horses run their final prep in the Derby Trial, which was held only one week before the Derby! Today this is very unusual. Also, the most prestigious prep has been the Blue Grass Stakes and that was run only 10 days before the Derby up until 1988. Finally, the Wood Memorial was held only 2 weeks before the Derby until 1993 and the Arkansas Derby was held only 2 weeks before the Derby from 1984-1995. It seems the current thinking is that 3-4 weeks is the ideal interval given that all of the major final preps (SA Dby, Wood, Blue Grass, and Aks Derby) are held in that time frame. You might wonder, is the popular thinking supported by the data?

Looking at the only Derby winners (see the list at the end of this message) can be a little misleading. It is probably more insightful to look at the spacing for all the entrants (winners and losers) and see how performance varies by spacing of the final prep. I tried to do a quick check of this for the last 20 years. I don\'t have info on all the horses for all the years (I had data for 17 of the last 20) so these numbers are not complete and accurate and the sample sizes are not very large for some of the categories (particularly > 4 weeks, which is probably the category of most interest); however, the numbers do suggest that the popular notion that 3-4 week spacing is optimal may be correct and that more than 4 weeks may be suboptimal.

Of course, there are all sorts of biases built into this data. For example, since the most prestigious preps were all in the 10 days to 4 week range, you would expect that many of the horses that took a longer break may have had health problems or may have been a cut below the top horses. Also, as was suggested in another post, maybe it does have something to do with American training methods. Still, I don’t see how the data would support a strong argument for resting a Derby hopeful for more than 4 weeks immediately prior to the Derby.

Anyway here are the numbers. I think the most meaningful numbers are probably the % of starters that finished in the money since those numbers would be more reliable than the % winners for the smaller sample sizes.

# Days before Derby, total starters, % of starters that won Derby, % In-The-Money

7 Days: 15, 0%, 14%
10 Days: 20, 10%, 25%
2 weeks: 89, 5%, 15%
3 weeks: 96, 8%, 21%
4 weeks: 52, 6%, 21%
> 4 weeks: 27, 0%, 3%

An interesting side note is that from 1982 to 1992 no Derby winner came out of the Wood. After that, they switched the Wood from 2 weeks to 3 weeks before the Derby and the Wood has since produced 3 of the last 8 Derby winners. Similarly, the Arkansas Derby was run 3 weeks prior to the Derby in 1983 the year it produced the Derby winner (Sunny\'s Halo) then it switched to 2 weeks prior to the Derby and failed to produce a winner for 11 years. It then switched back to 3 weeks before the Derby and a few years later produced another winner (Grindstone) and a few years after that a close second (Victory Gallop). The data would suggest that this might be more than just a coincidence.

Finally, here are the last 20 Derby winners along with their final Derby preps:

82, Gato Del Sol, Blue Grass (10 days)
83, Sunny\'s Halo, Aks Dby (3 weeks)
84, Swale, Lex (2 weeks)
85, Spend A Buck, GS Dby (2 weeks)
86, Ferdinand, SA Dby (4 weeks)
87, Alysheba, Blue Grass (10 days)
88, Winning Colors, SA Dby (4 weeks)
89, Sunday Silence, SA Dby (4 weeks)
90, Unbridled, Blue Grass (3 weeks)
91, Strike The Gold, Blue Grass (3 weeks)
92, LIl E. Tee, Aks Dby (2 weeks)
93, Sea Hero, Blue Grass (3 weeks)
94, Go for Gin, Wood (3 weeks)
95, Thunder Gulch, Blue Grass (3 weeks)
96, Grindstone   Aks Dby (3 weeks)
97, Silver Charm, SA Dby (4 weeks)
98, Real Quiet, SA Dby (4 weeks)
99, Charismatic, Lex (2 weeks)
2000, Fusaichi Pegasus, Wood (3 weeks)
2001, Monarchos, Wood (3 weeks)

Good luck to all in handicapping this year\'s Derby.

Chris

[derby1592]

I failed to notice that Lil E Tee won the Aks Derby in 1992 so the interesting side note is not quite so interesting...

Chris