From Expressbet.com

Two Strokes of Fortune for Pharoah
May 18, 2015 | By Jeremy Plonk

Yes, American Pharoah has won America's two biggest races for the 3-year-old set so far this year – the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. So it's easy to see why his fortune has been two-pronged. But as he embarks on stage three of the Triple Crown at Belmont in three weeks' time, his biggest strokes of good fortune both saw bad luck turn good.

American Pharoah was a Zayat Stables home-bred, but not one that drew the name of a family member or was earmarked for destiny by the home team. In fact, they entered him at sale and expected to draw big bucks. But when American Pharoah injured himself slightly before breezing at the 2-year-old in training sales, he didn't draw the attention from buyers that Ahmed Zayat had hoped. This was supposed to be a million-dollar sales bonanza. When the bidding war muffled, Zayat tipped his hand for $300,000 as a buy-back and decided to keep American Pharoah.

Stroke of very good fortune, number one.

Once at the races and under Bob Baffert's care, it was apparent at Del Mar that the trainer liked what he saw. He told his wife and those around him that his key juvenile of the meet was American Pharoah, and had to eat a bit of crow after a head-scratching debut no-show. But Baffert went back to the drawing board, remained confident and rattled off successive victories in the G1 Del Mar Futurity and G1 Frontrunner at Santa Anita without ever stepping foot back into a maiden race.

Heading into the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, a deep foot bruise was reported with American Pharoah and it was announced he'd miss the championship showdown at Santa Anita on his home track. Not only did he miss the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, but he would spend 168 days between his Frontrunner Stakes victory and his mid-March return in Oaklawn's Rebel Stakes.

A second stroke of very good fortune had been struck.

If that sounds counter-intuitive, consider where American Pharoah stands right now. He's on the brink of the toughest test of his life in the 1-1/2 miles Belmont Stakes. A total of 20 horses have failed to deliver the Triple Crown trophy in this position two-thirds of the way home and in the gate at Belmont. Only 11 have succeeded.

And while there's much talk about what went right and wrong for Triple Crown winners and losers, there's a very distinct factor now in American Pharoah's favor. The injury in October last year and long time to return put him on a mandatory winter break that was a hallmark of all 11 past Triple Crown winners. Even in an era when horses ran far more than today, the 11 Triple Crown winners averaged a winter break of 158 days! Yes, 158 days on average! American's Pharoah's 168-day break between starts at 2 and 3 hits smack-dab in the middle of where it should when measuring all 11 Triple Crown winners. Their time between rookie and sophomore seasons is listed below:

WINTER BREAKS OF TRIPLE CROWN WINNERS
(Days between final 2YO start & 3YO debut)

238 days   Sir Barton (1919)
210 days   Gallant Fox (1930)
205 days Omaha (1935)
186 days   War Admiral (1937)
186 days   Assault (1946)
--168 days   American Pharoah (2015) --
154 days   Count Fleet (1943)
144 days   Seattle Slew (1977)
130 days Affirmed (1978)
119 days   Secretariat (1973)
86 days Whirlaway (1941)
86 days Citation (1948)

While this certainly doesn't guarantee American Pharoah victory at Belmont Park, his freshness by default could just turn out to be the factor that puts him over the hump when so many others have failed. And if it does, his own body's failures at the 2-year-old sales and heading into the Breeders' Cup could be the most ironic of factors that immortalize him as a racing giant.

rhagood: 30 triple crown attempts:
11 wins
7 second
5 thirds
4 fourths
3 unplaced

Why American Pharoah could be a special case in the annals of Triple Crown history

https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/articles/why-american-pharoah-could-be-special-case-annals-triple-crown-history

James Willoughby
MAY 19, 2015

"The past is a different country: they do things differently there."

The 2015 Belmont Stakes will hopefully have a more upbeat ending than the 1953 novel The Go-Between, but far-distant history still fades into obsolescence in many modern minds.

In assessing American Pharoah\'s chances of completing the U.S. Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes on June 6, should we really choose Affirmed\'s triumph in 1978 as an arbitrary cut-off point? This colt may not be best assessed through the coarse evidence of similarity; he could be a special case, an outlier, the Giancarlo Stanton of horse racing.

A total of 12 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners have lost in the Belmont since Affirmed, but overall the record of Triple Crown aspirants is much better: from 30* tries, 11 horses have completed the sweep.

(*Note: I have excluded Forward Pass from the sample, because the colt was awarded the 1968 Kentucky Derby following the disqualification of first-past-the-post Dancer\'s Image after a positive drug test.)

Other than recency bias, potential reasons in favour of dividing Triple Crown history into different regimes are:

The decline of stamina in the U.S. Thoroughbred;

The apparent decline of toughness in the breed;

The tendency for Kentucky Derby also-rans to skip the Preakness.

If any or all of these are valid, results in the more distant past may not be representative. Let\'s examine the evidence.

 

The gradual decline of stamina

There is no need to trawl the evidence once again. This has been done comprehensively in prior articles. In summary, the final time, Beyer Speed Figure, AND relative finishing speed all show a downward trend in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont. It isn\'t clear how to interpret this evidence, other than to conclude that U.S. racehorses do not stay as well as before.

There was an injection of stamina after the World War II that provided a boost to running times in two-turn dirt races during the period 1950-1980, but this may be gradually receding according to statistical evidence.

 

The apparent decline of toughness in the breed

This notion seems to have become a meme of the modern horse racing industry. It is, of course, also a convenient excuse for underperformance. Are racehorses more flimsy than their forebears?

This question has been debated extensively – and equally thoroughly considered by authors. It is true that the average number of starts per year per horse has halved in the last 50 years, but this does not prove that the modern Thoroughbred cannot run more often, only that it has not been required to do so.

The thinking in some quarters is that U.S. Thoroughbred performance is over dependent on medication, thereby resulting in a decline in the ability of prized stallions to produce sound stock. There are also increased commercial imperatives to breed from runners whose own racing careers were abbreviated.

 

The tendency for Kentucky Derby also-rans to skip the Preakness

This is a theme that aroused the emotions of California Chrome\'s part-owner Steve Coburn just seconds after the defeat of his colt in last year\'s Belmont.

"I\'m 61 years old, and I will never see another Triple Crown winner because of the way they [skip the Preakness]," he said in a televised interview. Apart from anything else, if American Pharoah does win, this statement should count as one of the worst sporting predictions in history.

Last year, Tonalist did not even run in the first two legs of the Triple Crown. The year before, Derby also-ran Palace Malice skipped the Preakness. However, the worth of analysing this trend through history in a proper statistical framework is highly dubious; the difference between horses missing the Preakness through design and those who were not fit to race clouds the issue.

 

Conclusion

All three reasons for believing that the task facing U.S. Triple Crown aspirants is different than in the past have some merit, though it is still a dangerous practice to assess an individual with a suite of particular characteristics by a limited sample of others who appear to possess similarity. It is sometimes tantamount to examining bacteria with a telescope not a microscope.

Several failed attempts at the Crown have resulted in near-misses, like that of Smarty Jones in 2004 and, in particular, Real Quiet in 1998. It may well be more problematic than in the past, but American Pharoah may be one of the best horses to attempt the Triple Crown in the Belmont.

This is the most compelling evidence: the final quarter of Triple Crown races is slow, U.S. Thoroughbred pedigrees may have become unbalanced towards speed, but that doesn\'t mean a phenom cannot buck the trend.

Take Major League Baseball, for instance. Annual average home-run totals show a sharp decline since the so-called steroid era. Then along comes Giancarlo Stanton, who can regularly hit a baseball more than 450 feet and clean out of Dodger Stadium.

In any statistical distribution, it is possible for the average to decline with time but the variance to increase, making the probability of an outlier roughly the same.

Look at the chart of 2013 Belmont winner Palace Malice. These are the split times for each quarter:

23.11 – 23.55 – 24.29 – 25.52 – 26.65 – 27.58

A horse who can do what American Pharoah did to the Preakness field can do what Palace Malice did to the Belmont field. The fast-slow shape of modern U.S. classics means that the field may run slower collectively late on, but there is less running at the leader late. The bookies don\'t pay out based on historical context but on instantaneous achievement.

After winning the Belmont, Palace Malice won the 2014 Met Mile on the same track with splits of:

23.01 – 22.69 – 23.71 – 24.15

I very much doubt whether a European Derby winner could drop back to a mile so easily, mainly because a European horse would never win a Derby coming home as slowly as Palace Malice did.

Dirt races are not the same test of stamina as turf races because early and middle pace are not as strongly associated with winning on turf; they are not such strong weapons.

What American Pharoah showed in the Preakness was that he could be geared down after running hard to get the lead. He has tractable speed; he should not lose the Belmont in the early stages like some Triple Crown aspirants have.

It may well be true that the Belmont is more elusive than before, in theory. But so is hitting 475-foot home runs.

After the Kentucky Derby, American Pharoah looked as if he might well be stereotyped adequately as a potential Belmont failure, but he stepped up a lot in the Preakness. Others have done that and failed, but this colt has so much mid-race power than he could stagger home in the Belmont and still win.

Chart:

https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/sites/default/files/Ky%20Derby%20%20Preaknes%20winners%20in%20Belmont.jpg

skitimber: Without the list of horses that tried and failed and their corresponding down time, ?.

toppled: Since Affirmed won in 1978 days rest between last 2yo start & 1st 3yo start.  

Big Brown 183, I\'ll Have Another 152, Smarty Jones 41, Funny Cide 100, War Emblem 63, Charismatic 19, Real Quiet 34, Silver Charm 43, Sunday Silence 105, Alysheba 126, Pleasant Colony 98*, Spectacular Bid 87.

That\'s an average of 88 days (82 without I\'ll Have Another), a median of 93 days (87 without IHA) .  Add a day if going days from one race to the next.  

* I couldn\'t find Pleasant Colony\'s PPs, but I know he ran in the Remsen in 1980 & Fountain of Youth in 1981, 98 days rest.

Edit: The biggest problem with this thread is that because there have been no Triple Crown winners since the 1970s, you can\'t compare previous Triple Crown winners to present day horses.  While the winners of the 1970s all took about 4 months off in the winter, they then raced with little spacing. Secretariat & Seattle Slew raced in the Wood, 2 weeks before the Derby.  Affirmed took over 4 months off but then raced 4 times from his March return to the Derby, had one stretch of races 10 days apart & had 1 day short of 3 weeks before the Derby, racing on a Sunday 3 weeks before the Derby.  It was a different era.

rhagood: Just a launching point for a new thread... I\'m sure the writer never thought of his work having to stand up to the scrutiny of a full statistical analysis. Many on this board had a statistics class at some point, what I remember most were the gambling references as one of the few ways to make the numbers relatable to the normal person (read degenerate). References to risk/reward treatments have been offered up previously as all contain a few chapters right up our collective alleys!

Two more for the list:

The Winner\'s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691019347/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and just published:

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393080943/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

ajkreider: Whether AP wins this triple crown is ultimately not about how much rest he had over the winter, what splits he ran compared to Palice Malice, past failure rates, or any of these other irrelevancies.

It\'s now just about his ability to defeat those horses who will enter - including plenty fast, fresh horses like Materiality and Carpe.  If he does it he will have earned it against very good horses - and I\'ll rip up my tickets with a smile on my face.