What are they doing?/
 

I understand the accolades and rewards for a Derby win.There is a Derby winner every year. With the altering of some of the accepted ways of prepping and diminishing of rhe rigors of a camaign to get ready for the derby, arent some of them actually thinking they truely have a horse with the ability to win all three races and thus cutting back on the prepping and have a horse for all three. Like I said we have a derby winner every year but a Triple Crown winner is truely an accomplishment. Look back at last year. Woulda, Coulda, almost, and nearly. What an experience even for the fan. Are we really seeing a change in Goals and and seeing two seperate groups in the derby. Those that seek the derby at all cost and those that are looking for something REAL SPECIAL?

Each situation is different, but it almost seems to me like a lot of these guys are happy just to make it to the derby. Once they have graded earnings, they will try to get to the gate with the minimum amount of racing.

I think it is the total opposite. I think they are doing everything possible to have a horse ready to peak on Derby Day. They are giving no concern as to conditioning the horses to run back in two weeks for the Preakness and then three more weeks for the Belmont. I think you can get away with lightly racing your horse as a 3yo and spacing their races from 5 to 8 weeks to peak on Derby Day (see Barbaro and Closing Argument the past two years) but I think those sort of horses aren't prepared to run back in two weeks and wind up suffering career ending injuries (see Barbaro and Closing Argument). Afleet Alex was campaigned unconventionally with the intent of being able to last through the whole Triple Crown. The end result was that he was flat in the Derby but was well prepared for the next two legs. Of course he wound up with a career ending injury as well but that may have been due to the Preakness incident.

Man, I wish most horses that were "flat" run as well as Afleet Alex did in Derby 131.

He got beat by two inferior horses in one of the slowest Derbies of all time. Yeah, I'd call it flat.

Well, we have a distinct difference in opinion then. He got the heck bumped out of him, stayed relatively close to the pace, and if he wasn't on THE dead part of the track that day (ask Madcap Escapade), we'd have our first Triple Crown winner since 1978. Yup, sounds pretty flat to me.

Incidentally, Curlin or Circular Quay might win the Derby, but there is zero chance those two horses win the TC. In fact, I'd say the likelihood of one of those two horses winning the Preakness or Belmont is higher than their chances of winning the Derby.