How Derby winners have performed in Preakness since '89
 

Horses who won the Derby positioned on the lead throughout to less than 5 lengths back:


* War Emblem (wire-to-wire) Won the Preakness next out and paid $7.60

* Go For Gin (head back of leader) 2nd by three-quarters of a length at 5/2 in Preakness next out.

* Funny Cide (2 lengths) Won the Preakness by 10 lengths and paid $5.80

* Smarty Jones (2.5 lengths) Won the Preakness by 11 lengths and paid $3.40

* Thunder Gulch (3.25 lengths) 3rd by three-quarter of a length at 7/2 odds. Subsequent Belmont and Travers winner.

* Charismatic (3.75 lengths) 1st by 1.5 lengths in Preakness. Paid $18.80 to win.

* Big Brown (4 lengths) 1st by 5 lengths in Preakness. Paid $2.40

* Barbaro (4 lengths) DNF in Preakness. Broke down.

* Silver Charm (4.25 lengths) 1st by a head in Preakness. Paid $8.20 to win.


Total next-out record. 9 starters - 6 winners - 1 second - 1 third. Of the three beaten -- two were beaten by less than a length and Barbaro broke down. Avg win mutual is $7.70.



Derby winners that closed between 5 lengths to 10 lengths of ground:


* Animal Kingdom (6.25 lengths) close second at 2/1 in Preakness.

* Lil E Tee (6.25 lengths) 5th at 4/1 in Preakness.

* Sunday Silence (6.50 lengths) Won Preakness and paid $6.20

* I'll Have Another (8 lengths) Won Preakness and paid $8.40

* Real Quiet (8 lengths) Won Preakness and paid $7.00

* Super Saver (8 lengths) 8th in Preakness at 9/5 odds


Total Next out record: 3-for-6 (50% wins) with 1 second place finish. Avg win price of $7.30



Derby winners who rallied from more than 10 lengths back:


* Strike The Gold (10.25 lengths) 6th at 9/5 odds in Preakness.

* Sea Hero (10.75 lengths) 5th by 8 lengths at 4/1 in Preakness

* Fusaichi Pegasus (12.5 lengths) 2nd by 4 lengths at 1/5 odds.

* Unbridled (13.25 lengths) 2nd by 2.5 lengths in the Preakness.

* Monarchos (16 lengths) 6th by 7.5 lengths at 2/1 odds in Preakness

* Giacomo (16.25 lengths) 3rd by 9.75 lengths at 6/1 odds in Preakness

* Grindstone (16.75 lengths) Never raced again

* Street Sense (19.5 lengths) 2nd by a head at 6/5 odds.

* Mine That Bird (21 lengths) 2nd by a length at 6/1 odds.


None of the nine succeeded in the Preakness. They compiled a next out record of 8-0-4-1 with four beaten favorites.

Removing Barbaro and Grindstone from consideration, the stats look like this:

Less than 5 lengths back: 8-6-1-1 (75% wins, 100% ITM) Avg win mutual $7.70

5 to 10 lengths back: 6-3-1-0 (50% wins, 66.66% ITM) Avg win mutual $7.30

More than 10 lengths back: 8-0-4-1 (0% wins, 62.50% ITM)

We had three horses in the years Kentucky Derby who closed more than 10 lengths and finished in the Superfecta. They are Orb, Golden Soul, and Revolutionary.

Since 1989, here's a list of all horses who closed 10 or more lengths to make the Derby Superfecta and run again in a triple crown race. The result of their next start is in parenthesis.


Dullahan (7th as 5/2 favorite in Belmont)

Went The Day Well (10th at 5/1 in Preakness)

Ice Box (9th in Belmont as the 9/5 favorite)

Make Music For Me (10th in Belmont at 12/1 odds)

Mine That Bird (2nd in Preakness at 6/1 odds)

Denis Of Cork (2nd in Belmont at 7/1 odds)

Street Sense (2nd in Preakness as 6/5 favorite)

I'mawildandcrazyguy (6th in Belmont at 9/1)

Giacomo (3rd in Preakness at 6/1)

Monarchos (6th in Preakness at 2/1 co-favorite)

Fusaichi Pegasus (2nd in Preakness at 1/5 favorite)

Impeachment (3rd in Preakness at 19/1)

Victory Gallop (2nd as 2/1 favorite)

Sea Hero (5th in the Preakness at 4/1)

Prairie Bayou (Won the Preakness as 2/1 favorite)

Strike The Gold (6th in the Preakness as 9/5 favorite)

Green Alligator (10th in the Belmont Stakes at 4/1 odds)

Unbridled (2nd in Preakness as the 8/5 favorite)

18-1-6-2 (8 beaten favorites)

Lone winner 2/1 favorite Prairie Bayou won Preakness over sprinter Cherokee Run and Robert Perez's El Bakan.

This makes Pleasant Colony a rare bird indeed.

Doug,

Looking at the pace figures, final times, pace dynamics, wasn't Super Saver one the few horses with a really strong Derby who just flopped in the Preakness?

Here is the Paceline

CD 05/01/2010 11 113 92 81 Super Saver

So the race collapsed but he was pretty close to that 113 at only 8 lengths of it, other Derbys with a +25 to +35 profile seem to all really collapse into 15-20 length Giacomo style wins.

Either way I wills stab against Orb.

Alysheba and Spectacular Bid both did recently win the Derby from 10 lengths or more back as well.

However, Alysheba did it with dramatic flair, almost falling, and coming on to win anyway.

Spectacular Bid, meanwhile, did it against a historic slow pace.

Spectacular Bid ducked in a bit at the start, and was settled 6.5 lengths behind a 24 1/5th opening quarter.

How slow is a 24 1/5 opening quarter in the Kentucky Derby?

It's the outright slowest in the Derby since 1959 (54 years ago!)

And the last time an opening quarter in the Kentucky Derby went slower than 24 1/5th was 1912 (101 years ago) when a horse named Worth got away with a 24 3/5th opening quarter and went wire-to-wire in 2:09 2/5th over a track that was a bog.

General Assembly, who was leading after that historically slow 1st quarter kicked it in a bit and Spectacular Bid was 10 lengths back and in 6th position after a half in 47 2/5ths.

He made a powerhouse 5-wide move on the far turn and won going away despite the slow pace.

Spectacular Bid's Ragozin figure was the second fastest Kentucky Derby figure in the 1900's ... trailing only Secretariat's by 1 point.

This information is fantastic! It more or less confirms what my memory thought to be the case, just in dramatic detail.

Doug, I will be having a tremendous vested interest in the race and this analysis is sensational stuff. Much obliged.

Super Saver might have just been a slop freak.

He only raced twice on a sloppy track, one time he broke his maiden by 7 lengths in a race where the 3rd place horse was beaten 15 lengths and the 4th place horse was beaten 20 lengths.

His other sloppy track race, he of course won the Derby with Borel after getting a clear rail trip.

History says you have to stab against Orb ... I just don't know who you stab against him with. I'd love to see Dreaming of Julia step up...but Pletcher is talking about running her in the Belmont Stakes. I don't know about that though, she's out of the Rick Violette speed sprinter Dream Rush...which sure does offset a lot of the A. P. Indy on the top of the pedigree.

I would have never guessed, especially SB. I remember that bold move but didn't realize it was from so far back. I'm still waiting for Screen King to pass GA for the exacta. I do have the very colorful $5 win and $5 exacta box tote tickets for sale at face value.

Yep. The info you provided is good and definitely shows a useful historical trend. But three of those Derby-winning closers were only denied a repeat in the Preakness by Summer Squall, Curlin, and Rachel Alexandra. I don't think there's anybody like that lining up against Orb in Pimlico.

Doesn't Orbs Fl Derby tell you he can be much closer to the pace if needed?

Without a doubt this is true.

Like I said, you have to go fishing if you want to bet against Orb. There isn't much out there.

You jumped off the Goldencents bandwagon awfully quickly. I think he may be the one I would try.

Paul

Speaking of which...

Here's another stat from the good ole Post Derby file:

In the history of the Derby, 74 horses have now run an opening 1/4 mile faster than 22.80 seconds.

Only one of those 74 went on to win. Bold Forbes in 1976.

10 beaten post time favorites among the 74 horses who went faster than 22.80 in the opening quarter.

Four went faster than 22.80 this year:

Palace Malice
Goldencents (beaten 49.5 lengths)
Falling Sky (beaten 53 lengths)
Verrazano (beaten just 15.75 lengths)


Vyjack (beaten 52.75 lengths) missed the cut by running his first quarter in 22.86 but having to go so wide into the first turn after running that fast quarter probably didn't help his cause much.

:tro:

:tro:

He did look uncomfortable on the track on Saturday.

Some of those other closers had pretty good positional speed.

Fu Peg was never more than 3.5 lengths back in the Wood Memorial and Never more than 1 length back in the San Felipe and he dominated both races.

FuPeg also lost to a fresh horse in the Preakness.

One of the admirable things about Orb is his hardiness and ability to gradually improve a little with each start.

Animal Kingdom won his Derby with a looping wide move into the teeth of a slow early pace. It was the kind of analytically exciting performance that Orb has never come remotely close to delivering.

Animal Kingdom is a sissy though. He runs killer races and does historic things on all 3 surfaces ... his race in the BC Mile off that kind of layoff was unreal, winning a Dubai World Cup on Tapeta in that fashion ... just awesome.

But, he doesn't exactly campaign like Kelso or Spectacular Bid. He gives one great performance on the big race he's primed for, and either regresses or is put in mothballs.

Fu Peg wasn't the hardiest horse either.

I'll bet against it ... but Orb's best cards right now might be his hardiness and his lack of decent competition from within this crop.

I've Struck a Nerve came into the Risen Star Stakes with a 1-for-8 record, and he won it at odds of 135/1. Code West, who got humiliated in a workout by the filly Midnight Lucky finished 2nd. He couldn't even win an N1X allowance race on the Derby undercard.

And who was behind 135/1 shot I've Struck a Nerve and fading Baffert Code West in the Risen Star:

Golden Soul (Derby 2nd place finisher)
Normandy Invasion (Derby 4th place finisher)
Mylute (Derby 5th place finisher)
Oxbow (Derby 6th place finisher)
Palace Malice (Derby near record setting pace setter)

All of them in the wake of I've Struck A Nerve and Code West. The two big excuse horses that day (Oxbow and Normandy Invasion both had horrid trips in the Risen Star) both seem like the best chances in the Preakness.

Douglas,

Always great stuff!

He also didn't handle the track.

It will probably prove trivial if all of this deep fried speed goes (Titletown Five, Goldencents, Vyjack, Gov Charlie, Itsmyluckyday, Oxbow, etc)

If Normandy Invasion stays away and six speed horses show up off of a fading running line ... this race is a pass and I wouldn't bet 2-cents against Orb ... who won't be underlayed because of the big crowd a/effect that led to Wise Dan paying $3.20 against Lukas and some rats...when he would have paid $2.40 max almost any other day.

Obviously a lot could change between now and post time but at the moment it seems to me that backwheeling Orb in exactas and tris will probably provide the best value. There will be enough speed entered and he's a consistent enough horse that an off-the-board finish by him seems extremely unlikely. On the other hand, he'll be seriously overbet on top in the exotics and given the way the Derby was run, as DrugS pointed out, the only value in the race will be in trying to beat him.

As always, I enjoy reading your analysis. I will say however that I don't fully understand the relevance of the risen star. If these are developing 3YOs then it stands to reason that earlier races may not be the best measure of current form and ability. Even if you look at the more recent Louisiana Derby, the top four have all returned to have solid next out performances (which I think also indicates that BSF were wrong about that race).


There continues to be a ton of Golden Soul bashing....There is an equal amount of excuse being given to Normandy Invasion. If you erase identifiers and look at the pre derby PPs of Golden Soul and Normandy Invasion you will see a lot of similarities in my opinion. The biggest difference was that the former was five times the price. Will the have similar tracks post Derby? I'm not sure, just trying to understand how Normandy backers tossed Golden Soul (if they did).

It's simply not a good crop of 3-year-olds colts.

The group that ran in the Breeders Cup Juvenile last year wasn't much, Southern California only getting one horse to the Derby ...and a bunch of the underneath Derby horses losing to I've Struck A Nerve are three ways you could try illustrating it.

Which, sadly, may be the only circumstances under which we ever see a Triple Crown winner again- one 3-year-old who is just better than a mediocre rest of the crop during the 5 weeks of the Triple Crown.

Not saying that's Orb, though as a fan of racing of course I wish it to be.

I rewatched the Sunday Silence/Easy Goer Preakness recently and thought about how if either of them had been born in a different year, the other would have been a TC winner.

Yeah. Mine That Bird made a respectable bid at it.

Had Rachel Alexandra not run in the Preakness, he'd have nailed down the first two legs of the triple crown and looked a sure winner on the far turn of the Belmont Stakes.

Real Quiet, while very much a fine horse, almost had it. But he was no superstar. He had a couple of defeats at Santa Fe Downs on his 2yo form, he bombed in a race at Golden Gate at age 3, and wasn't exactly a killer older horse.

Meanwhile, Skip Away and Holy Bull both came into the triple crown as top figure in their final prep races ... and they didn't manage to win a single race in the series between them.

Mine that Birds Derby was much better than people thought, here is the paceline

CD 05/02/2009 11 98 90 86 Mine That Bird

So it was a +12, and only a 98 on the front end, hardly anything crazy, so he started flying by horses who were not exactly stopping, the final time is also solid in compared to other derbys the past decade.

Jay Cronley's column on the ESPN site this week says that- not about Skip Away and Holy Bull specifically, but that the Derby winners in recent years have not had the highest number going in. Though sometimes he's so rambling he makes me wonder if he tipped back a few before sitting down at the keyboard, I always enjoy Cronley's columns. I thought this week was particularly good.

http://espn.go.com/horse-racing/stor...rby-mind-games

Yes, that's wasn't very coherent.

The form of these 3-year-olds become more fickle as they're asked to do a lot less racing and a lot less training.

Regarding his point on the Beyer figures... here's the list of horses who had the top Beyer figure going into the Derby each year since they've been published in the DRF:

2013: Goldencents
2012: Bodemeister
2011: Archarchrach - Nehro (tie)
2010: Devil May Care - Sidney's Candy (tie)
2009: Dunkirk
2008: Big Brown ($6.80)
2007: Curlin
2006: Sinister Minister
2005: Bellamy Road
2004: The Cliff's Edge
2003: Empire Maker
2002: War Emblem ($43.00)
2001: Millennium Wind
2000: Fusaichi Pegasus ($7.20)
1999: Charismatic ($64.60) - General Challenge (tie)
1998: Indian Charlie
1997: Silver Charm ($10.00) - Free House (tie)
1996: Skip Away
1995: Serena's Song
1994: Holy Bull
1993: Diazo
1992: Pine Bluff - Lil E Tee ($35.60) (tie)


Only once in the last 11 years has the top figure, on Beyers, won the Derby. But 3 times they've finished in 2nd place, and once 3rd.

That's very interesting that two of the most recent fillies had the highest or co-highest Beyer going in. That, I think, is a support to the argument that some of the filly prep races should count toward Derby qualifying points.

Unfortunately for both Serena's Song and Devil May Care, they didn't have the right running style in those respective years, and both were fried up by the fast pace.

But both performed well immediately after the Derby.

Devil May Care won the Grade 1 Mother Goose and Grade 1 Coaching Club Oaks in her next two starts. Before a disappointing 4th in the Alabama in what was her final career start. An illness led to her death.

Serena's Song won the Black Eyed Susan by 9 lengths just two weeks after her Derby defeat. She won the Grade 1 Mother Goose in her next start after that. And she won the Grade 1 Haskell against the males.

Here's Serena's Song winning the Haskell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGw9GiXPwoA


Here she is a good 2nd in the Whitney Handicap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BUHCLBuK1s

Good stuff, but "Only once in the last 11 years" sounds worse than it really is. 11 years is an arbitrary cutoff. You could as easily say 'twice in the last 12 years', 'four times in the last 15 years', etc. Going back any number of years greater than 11 would produce a huge ROI for betting the Derby horse(s) with the top BSF.

--Dunbar

I'll take this crop all day long compared to '11, '10, '09 (less Rachel), '08 (less Big Brown).

Time will tell where this crop belongs when compared to other 3-year-old crops.

The big 2-year-old races:

Breeders Cup Juvenile: All starters in this race are a combined 0-for-16 in Graded Stakes races since.

Kentucky Jockey Club: The top 5 finishers are a combined 0-for-17 since after Uncaptured was beaten as the 2-5 favorite in the Wando Stakes.

The Cash Call Futurity: Violence won - he's hurt. Fury Kapcori was 2nd. He hasn't run back. Den Legacy was 3rd, he stinks.

The Remsen, the best 2yo race last year (1:50.27 at 9f) has been overshadowed by a slow maiden race (1:38.73) run a few races earlier. That maiden race was won by Orb. Revolutionary finished 3rd.

The class of '11 had some who turned into pretty nice horses. One of them won some big race overseas back in March, I hear.

My apologies to Animal Kingdom and Shackleford.

Just imagine if Afleet Alex had stumbled worse or gone down in the Preakness - Scrappy T would have been taken down and Giacomo (who finished 3rd) would have been trying for all the marbles in the Belmont.

Watchmaker weighs in on the subject of whether the Preakness favors speed horses:

http://www.drf.com/blogs/pimlico-tig...-favoring-nope

What does any of that have to do with this thread?

No one thinks Pimlico is a speed favoring track. In fact, they typically slow the track down and the rail is sometimes bad on Preakness day.

I'll post this chart again ... pay close attention to the horses who SKIPPED the Preakness and ran in the Belmont.

That would be six of them:

Dullahan (7th as 5/2 favorite in Belmont)
Ice Box (9th in Belmont as the 9/5 favorite)
Make Music For Me (10th in Belmont at 12/1 odds)
Denis Of Cork (2nd in Belmont at 7/1 odds)
I'mawildandcrazyguy (6th in Belmont at 9/1)
Green Alligator (10th in the Belmont Stakes at 4/1 odds)


Denis of Cork was the only who managed a top 5 finish ... he was a distant 2nd to D' Tara.