Derby Data
 

If you want to look at about 50 angles you may noy have thought of check out this web site from the Courier Journel: Very interesting stuff and a great site to make you change you mind......again.

http://www.courier-journal.com/cjspo...ase/index.html

Enjoy,

Spyder

That is a pretty awesome site.

Interesting to look at a few bits of information. I know folks love the closing 1/8 time in a 9f race as an indicator of a particular horse's ability to go long. If you disclude the five horses who all went under 12 in the last furlong of the Blue Grass, you're left with four horses - three Derby bound - who have run sub-13 second final furlongs in Derby preps:

Curlin, 11.9
Cowtown Cat, 12.7
Hard Spun, 12.8

More great data: since 1980, only four horses have run slower than 1:50.0 in their final 9f preps and won the Derby (Sea Hero, Genuine Risk, Charismatic, THunder Gulch). Horses who qualify for 2007 include Chelokee, Hard Spun, Nobiz, Scat Daddy, Stormello, Tiago, and Xchanger.

It's really amazing just how many facts are here. Iwas just looking at the one you refered to.

Spyder

Thanks for posting this!

The Courier Journal is a damn good newspaper, especially for a midsize city. I love this site...

I am doing some calculating here. Hold tight.

OK, so if you figure there are 51 categories on their website (not including PP, if they're a TC nominee, or the CJ Derby "rating") here is how the field stacks up by total number of positives out of 51 categories:

Street Sense 44
Nobiz 39
Scat Daddy 39
Cowtown Cat 35
Any Given 35
Dominican 35
Great Hunter 34
Quay 32
Hard Spun 31
Teuflesberger 31
Zanjero 29
Sam P. 28
Tiago 27
Chelokee 27
Curlin 27
Stormello 26
Storm in May 24
Xchanger 22
Crazy Guy 19
Liquidity 19
Sedgefield 18
Cobalt Blue 15
Slew's Tizzy 14

I've found my winner again Cowtown Cat. Check this out.

"I know folks love the closing 1/8 time in a 9f race as an indicator of a particular horse's ability to go long."

do the people that like this stat ever consider that when a horse is asked to run is different in a 9f race than a 10f race?

this is why deep closers that almost get there at 9f usually do the same at 10f.

Dude, I found this last year, and I really liked it. If you click on the different angles, it explains what they mean and gives you history behind it. I'm a CJ guy, it's my local paper.

Who isn't.

I dunno. I read it every day.

I'm not sure I get your point. The three horses I mentioned all won off the front end of their last prep races.

do you ever get the feeling that if this year's derby was run on polytrack there'd be like an 8 way photo?

Nah, that would be too predictable for the poly. It would probably wind up more like the Lexington with Stormello wiring the field just to completely throw off everyone.

If it was run on Poly..we would have to say it's the best 3 minutes in sports instead of 2 minutes.