Stately Victor

[TGJB]

We went through this exercise a few years ago, but we can do it again. Take the average size of a Derby field over the last 50 years ago (18 or so?), and see whether horses on the lead have won more or less than their share. You can do the same thing with horses who were in the first four at the first call, etc.

Right off the top of my head I can think of several that were either on the lead or near it that won, mostly because I bet on several of them-- Bold Forbes, Spend A Buck, and War Emblem, and Go For Gin and Smarty (just to name a couple) were close up.

[Rich Curtis]

Your point is based on results and is therefore illegitimate. Results don\'t matter. What matters is what people think ought to have happened. Closers would have won all those races had they not bounced.

[jack72906]

Nitpick-The finish in my original post is the horse\'s finish in the Derby. Thanks for the heads up.

[jimbo66]

TGJB,

Point taken as far as speed horses winning the Derby.  But the race dynamics of several of those races where you named the winners were quite different than what many of us expect to see on May 1st.

You are WAY older than me, so I can\'t speak to Bold Forbes or Spend a Buck.

But War Emblem was in a paceless derby.  I remember those PP\'s like it was yesterday.  My last paragraph of the write up I did on the race for a few buddies was \"the key to the race will be to see what horse with fast figures can sit behind the only two speed horses in the race, who were both hopeless longshots - War Emblem and Proud Citizen\".  I settled on Medaglia d\'Oro.  I had not found Thorograph in those days and perhaps had I seen the TG fig War Emblem had run in the Illinois Derby and his prior race, I would have been on him.

Go for Gin did go wire to wire, when the other speed horse, Holy Bull, didn\'t break clean.

Smarty sat second in a sea of slop and was just tons better than the rest of that class.  Not sure it would have mattered where he was early in that race, he was so much better than those.

The \"speed horses\" in this year\'s Derby aren\'t the fastest horses in the race.  Rule and Super Saver have nice sheets and good patterns, but would need to move forward to win.  Sydney\'s Candy is hard to call.  I won\'t factor his synthetic figs much into guessing what his dirt form will be.  He could improve on dirt, I guess, but hard to bet it that way, at what will likely be a relatively short price.  Line of David will be coming in off one big fig, off 3 weeks rest.  No thanks.  American Lion has shown no rating gear and is not quick enough to lead these horses.  If people want to bet the patterns of Rule or Super Saver at 20-1 and hope that one of them can suddenly learn to pass horses in what will be the toughest tests of their lives (when they couldn\'t do it in much easier scenarios), then they have more faith in patterns than me.

[jbelfior]

Winning Colors another one. All dominant wire to wire winners in their prep except for \'Gin. The challenge is finding a Spend a Buck and not a Brother Derek or an Althea.

Good Luck,
Joe B.

[magicnight]

But Go for Gin prepped in the Wood and never caught Irgun, who was arguably the best horse that year (up until the Wood, anyway, which I believe was his last race). Also, Gin caught a wet CD that day, and he loved it wet.