Worse KY Derby winner...
 

Since 1984, who has been the worse Ky Derby winner? For me it is Giacomo with Grindstone coming in a close 2nd.

Sea Hero in a romp.

One of Steve's and my wife's favorite :D

Worse than Giacomo?

You have left the building dude.

I realize you were still in diapers when Sea Hero won, but he did win the Champagne as a 2YO and the Travers as a 3YO.

Was he a monster? No. But he did win some decent races besides the Derby.

I'm gonna have to go with Lil E. Tee. in 1992.

I agree with Andy that Sea Hero was a solid performer and I'm reminded of that every time I visit the Paddock a Saratoga.

DrugS joke o mo is barely a grade 2 beast. Sea Hero was at least regally bred...check the DRF Travers day..It's right there in black and white

First of all, I still am in diapers.

Second of all, I followed national racing closely in '93 as we got feeds from all major tracks on cable here, and Sea Hero was an inconsistant dog biscuit. He was 0-for-11 with just ONE 2nd place finish on fast tracks besides his heroic Derby and Travers eyesore wins.

Third of all, your boy who started this thread asked for the worst Derby winner since '84 - not the least accomplished. So Sea Hero's wins in the Champagne over the oh so fabulous stayer Secret Odds and his win in the Travers over the 4-for-35 lifetime Kissin Kris don't translate to performance points like they do to acomplishment points.

Fourth of all, I bet on Giacomo in the Derby and even relentlessly touted him to the message board world before the race. Which means I had to (no doubt very wrongly) think he had some ability to go along with the dream race shape he was going to get in the race.

Fifth of all, Giacomo's mastery of Sun King - a dominant 3-for-3 in head-to-head matchups - really underlines the point that......nevermind - Sun King blows. Bad example.

Giacomo might be the second worst Derby winner since '84...but, lets not overlook all of his fine qualities. He has an Italian name, he won me money, and he was 4th beaten just four lengths to Invasor, Bernardini, and Premium Tap in the final start of his career. Sea Hero finished his career as a 4yo with seven straight losses - and went off at 7/2 or less in each and every one of those starts.

Lil E. Tee would have murdered both Sea Hero and my beloved Giacomo.

lil e tee really wasn't that bad a horse. gets a lot of undeserved grief.

I'll go with Go For Gin as mine.

i can see arguments for go for gin.
but then, i think war emblem was pretty bad. if that horse didn't get things completely his way, he quit. first or nowhere.

Doesn't make him bad. Just really dumb and immature.

not sure what to make of him. the way he raced, and then how things have gone for him since.
is he a nutcase?

This is really a two horse race between Giacomo and Sea Hero - all other answers are really bad answers.

I don't think we saw nearly enough of Grindstone to say he was one of the worst... he never ran a poor race.

Smarty Jones j/k Giacomo Alex should have won JR blew it:mad:

huh.......

he banged his head in the belmont...and valponi walked by the turds

I'll have to go with Giacomo as the worst, he was stuck with Mike Smith. At least Sea Hero was able to entice Jerry Bailey to ride.

Giacomo in a landslide. Only Derby I've attended live. Been to the Oaks 6 times, that works better for me.

Was thinking about it Sunday @ CD, it's almost harder to believe Closing Argument was about 3 strides from the wire from winning it after pressing that ridiculous pace the whole way around. He ran some race that day, literally out of nowhere (and never again.)

Some of you guys really forget about how downright awful Sea Hero was when he wasn't on - which was most of the time.

And when he did jump up and run a good race - it wasn't very good. Both he and Giacomo had lifetime top Beyers of 109.

Giacomo's race in the Goodwood prior to his 4th by 4 to the big three in the BC Classic was a very sneaky good race. Lava Man beat him by only three lengths - despite taking advantage of a slow pace on a very inside-speed biased track. He ran a 104 Beyer with every possible thing against him that day...in a way a better race than his 4th in the Classic next out.

war emblem either won, or was out of the money completely. it was like he knew if he couldn't win, he wanted to take his toys and go home.
then his post-race career has been nothing but a mess.


it was funny, i had volponi in the espn pick six contest. only race i missed was the turf mile that year.

Then explain his Preakness. He was not loose on the lead; under pressure the whole way.

Your exactly right. I couldn't believe how overrated he was. But after Giacomo, a new standard for incompetence was set.

Now if we went back 25 years to 1982, Gato Del Sol might've been the worst of all.

Giacomo did race on the west coast mostly back before the synthetic came in, so I would agree he was always racing against the bias. He might have had more success as an east coast based horse.

His loss in the Goodwood was over a track where speed couldn't lose...and Lava Man and Brother Derek both loafed and didn't pressure each other. Yet he was carving into their lead late.

It was a true strong biased track - there were occasionaly times when closers did very well on Santa Anita's dirt...that day certainly wasn't one of them.

Overrated as he was - Fusaichi Pegasus would have also murdered Sea Hero and Giacomo.

That's the first name that popped into my mind. Admittedly I've only been watching the Derby since 2000.

to me there can be only 3 possibilities. sea hero, charismatic and the legendary gato del sal (as i like to call giacamo).

the sea hero derby wins it for me as that's the only derby (since i got involved in racing) that i ever refused to watch.

If his other accomplishments don't matter, than surely his other losses don't matter either. Its rather apparent from his record that Sea Hero was the type of horse that had to run to find his best form, something that was exploited masterfully by Mack Miller, given that aside from a maiden win (which took several starts) and an allowance tune-up at 4, his only other victories came in the important Champagne, Derby, and Travers. If you want to dock him for losing blatant prep races like the Bluegrass and Jim Dandy, then that just underlines one of racing's major problems nowadays: that trainers (and fans) somehow have come to expect that top horses have to win every start.

Not that his best efforts were necessarily killer, but Sea Hero won races when it most mattered, and the fact that he was able to produce top form and win 3 of his 6 most important tests (Champagne, BC Juvenile, Derby, Preakness, Belmont, Travers) by open lengths has to have come from something more than just mere coincidence. Certainly, these focused performances amid a bevy of failures in lesser races has to be superior to the consistent mediocrity that Giacomo displayed in his career.

But regardless, simply put, Sea Hero, speedfigure-wise, ran faster than Giacomo in their respective Derbies (105 BSF vs. 100 BSF).

And just for a little more pull in his favor, Sea Hero, in his best performance, won the '93 Travers over a deep field:

Kissin Kris- Belmont runner up, recent Haskell winner who later was 3rd in that year's BC Classic
Miner's Mark- Jim Dandy winner and subsequent winner of the Jockey Club Gold Cup
Cherokee Run- Preakness runner up, subsequent BC Sprint winner and champion
Devoted Brass- Swaps winner, later a winner in Saudi Arabia
Virginia Rapids- Peter Pan winner, subsequent Carter winner
Colonial Affair- Belmont winner, subsequent JCGC and Whitney winner

Giacomo, in his only subsequent win defeated Preachinatthebar and Papi Chullo.

Oh...and Rathor.

Anyone who wants to take a look at the pp's for Sea Hero can here.

http://www.drf.com/tc/kentuckyderby/...rbywinners.pdf

Keep in mind - his crop of 3yo's was brutally bad. Prarie Bayou had a much tougher trip than him and was clearly the better horse in the Derby.

Prarie Bayou, in fact, came back to win the Preakness with a 98 Beyer (by open lengths - or 8 points the slowest Preakness ever) Giacomo ran the same figure as PB did when he was a distant 3rd in the Preakness.

Great, is this Prairie Bayou vs. Giacomo or Sea Hero vs. Giacomo. And, aside form Afleet Alex, wasn't the '05 crop pathetic as well?

Here's Giacomo's pps:

http://www.drf.com/tc/kentuckyderby/...erbywinner.pdf

Based on this, Giacomo was slower than Sea Hero by at least 5 BSF points at both 2 and 3.

But he got the upper hand at 4th, with a mighty 3rd in the Goodwood (curious that Giacomo is lauded for somewhat overcoming a bias--remember he didn't win--yet is not downgraded for his perfect setup in the Derby) and a scorching 4th in the BC Classic.

They look a lot alike on form.

As you say - Sea Hero's numbers were a little better at 2 and 3 - while the lighter raced Giacomo had better numbers at age 4 - with his last two races of his career both very solid races.

Giacomo got a setup in the Derby - but he stumbled at the start and it's never easy for a plodder without much turn of foot to weave through that big field. Still, circumstancial win, no doubt.

Sea Hero's ride by Jerry Bailey in the Derby is a coin flip with Kent D's ride on Fu Peg for 2nd best ride I've seen in the Derby. SH had a dream trip. I'd have liked to have seen what Sea Hero's trip in the '93 Derby would have looked like if the current version of Mike Smith was riding him.

Is Sea Hero the only horse to have won the Derby using a blinkers change?

I don't know.

Volponi's big race in the BC Classic came with a blinkers change though.

Speaking of 'worsts of the game'!

Yeah - he and perhaps Arcangues and Cat Thief in a pitched battle for that distinction.

There was a story I've heard before about Whirlaway getting run down on the lead in the one mile Derby Trial as a 3/5 favorite a few days before the '41 Derby.

Supposedly, Ben Jones took a knife and cut away one of his blinkers in the paddock on Derby day - he won the race by 8 lengths in record time....and his win in the Preakness next out featured one of the most amazing last-to-first wins in a major stake - along with perhaps Damascus's '67 Travers.

I guess that qualifies as a blinker change if the stories are true.

doesnt that move Giacomo up, that he won with one of the worst riders in the history of the game?