Blue Grass & Ark Derby
 

Not exactly two of the easier races to do figures for - but this is what I have for yesterday's two Derby preps...

Arkansas Derby (96 pace 98 final)
Blue Grass (67 pace 96 final)

Here's my updated pace figs so far for all the Derby preps at a route distance:

Dirt: (14 preps) Ranked from Fastest Paced to Slowest Paced

#1: Fountain of Youth (114) Leader at pace call: This One's For Phil

#2: Rebel (105) Leader at pace call: Old Fashioned

#3: Southwest (101) Leader at pace call: Silver City

#4: Arkansas Derby (96) Leader at pace call: Old Fashioned

#5: Florida Derby (94) Leader at pace call: Quality Road

#6. Illinois Derby (93) Leader at pace call: Perfect Song

#7. Wood Memorial (92) Leader at pace call: Lord Justice

#8: Gotham (89) Leader at pace call: Mr. Fantasy

#9: Risen Star (84) Leader at pace call: It Happened Again

#10t: Holy Bull (83) Leader at pace call: Bear's Rocket

#10t: Sam Davis (83) Leader at pace call: A P Cardinal

#12: Louisiana Derby (79) Leader at pace call: Papa Clem

#13: Tampa Derby (78) Leader at pace call: Join In The Dance

#14: Lecomte (75) Leader at pace call: Au Moon


Fake dirt: (9 preps)

#1. Sham (103) Leader at pace call: The Pampelmousse

#2. San Rafael (97) Leader at pace call: The Pampelmousse

#3. California Derby (86)

#4. El Camino Real Derby (84)

#5. Lane's End (83)

#6. Santa Anita Derby (81)

#7. Bob Lewis (73)

#8. San Felipe (69)

#9. Blue Grass Stakes (67)


* Blue Grass Analysis: General Quarter's trip in the Tampa Bay Derby was unquestionably a worse trip than I Want Revenge had in the Wood Memorial.

GQ - a horse with enough raw speed to win his debut going just 4.5 furlongs - and a horse with enough quality to win the Sam Davis from on the pace with a triple digit Beyer figure - lost all kinds of position going into the 1st turn .. and found himself dead last (!) after six furlongs at the pace call in the Tampa Derby .. a race which was the 13th slowest paced of the 14 Derby preps run as dirt routes this year.

Instead of being ball game over - and a total non-effort ... he managed to pass five horses in the rapidly run final 2.5 furlongs of the Tampa Derby.

Mediocre jockey Jamie Lopez - who lost 33% on the betting dollar - more than double the takeout - from 237 rides at Tampa so far this meet was replaced by Eibar Coa.

General Quarters did manage to win the Blue Grass .. but the workmanlike nature of his win considering the slow pace leads me to believe he's a little better horse on dirt than he is on synthetic.

Hold Me Back and Terrain were the two most victimized by the dawdling pace in the Blue Grass. You can upgrade both of them a little next time they run again on synthetic ... but both prefer synthetic tracks ... especially Hold Me Back.


Ark Derby: This race was supposed to be all about Old Fashioned - there was no Silver City - and that should have made him a lead pipe cinch. He just didn't relax at all like he did in the Remsen .. never seemed comfortable and always wanted to get on with it inspite of his riders best efforts to relax him.

Papa Clem: who ran downright terrible when an ugly 2nd in the La Derby - improved markedly over a fast track to win.

He always figured to handle the dirt - as his sire is Smart Strike (same sire as likely synthetic haters Curlin and Fabulous Strike) and his dam Miss Houndini won a Grade 1 stake race on dirt in just career start #2. Play against him next time he runs on a wet dirt track.

A pair of setup closers in Summer Bird and Win Willy finished 3rd and 4th and were both aided by a very solid pace. Win Willy proved his upset in the Rebel was probably due as much to the wet track as it was the scorching fast pace that set his late run up.

Couldn't the same be said of the breeding of POTN yet many on this board is very quick to dismiss his dirt chances? His breeding for dirt looks pretty solid to me.

Paul

I discussed that pretty deeply in this thread.....

http://www.derbytrail.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28569


What is kind of interesting about Empire Maker is that he has never yet sired a single horse to run an offical triple digit Beyer figure.

Yet - he had a Santa Anita Derby favorite and Wood Memorial 2nd choice run on the same day last week.

Good insights

The only thing I might not agree totally with is the last comment on Win Willy. I thought Win Willy ran almost the same in the AD as he did when he won the Rebel.
In the Rebel the pace may have simply collapsed and in the AD there was still racing going on up front.
If he ran the same, i couldn't make a lot of conclusions about the track.

I could be wrong. Just first impressions, and will have to review both races to get a stronger opinion.

No one knows for sure and to me it's no different than years past when the California horses were running on their speed favoring dirt surfaces. There was always the question of how the winners of the California preps would perform on the eastern dirt surfaces.Let's say for a moment that the pacesetter in the SA Derby had won that race and POTN had made the same winning move down the backstretch yet was unable to get past the leader on the old SA dirt surface.Would that make his chances any better to run well at Churchill?POTN defeated the probable derby favorite on a surface that may or may not be his best surface.For now I'll take that at face value and wait to see how he works at Churchill.

I didn't think his race was as good as last time.

Win Willy has a strong wet track pedigree and his trainer has Chuck Simon-esque like numbers on wet tracks .. so I wouldn't get excited about him again unless he finds another spot where he gets both a rapid pace to setup his close and a slow tiring wet racetrack.

do you think old fashioned ran better (number wise) in the Arkansas Derby?

I thought he ran much better.

No - I don't.

He ran worse imo.

then we have a disagreement (at least to the point that this will interest me in exploring this race deeper)

Besides the visual appearance, I think I am biased against the closing times here.

In the Arkansas Derby 38seconds for 3/8ths = moderate
in the Rebel Stakes 33seconds for 5/16ths = terrible

And his oldest foals have just turned 4. Oh, wow, he only had 6 SWs in his first crop, including a dual G1 winner (on Poly and Cushion), a G2 winner (at Aqu) and a dual G3 winner (at OP and CD). And none of them is very fast, according to you, they just beat all the horses who ran against them in those stakes races.

Obviously, if he doesn't sire a 'fast' horse in his first crop, he never will be able to.

but did any of them run a triple digit beyer? that's what drugs mentioned-not whether he had stakes winners or not.

He's been bred to a whole bunch of amazing mares ...

I guess we should be impressed that he has managed to sire a few wonderful horses like the spectacualar Country Star, Pioneer of the Nile, Acoma, and Imperial Council?

I know ... I'm forgetting Mushka.

Seriously, do you really feel as if he's lived up to expectations?

Depends on what your expectations were. If you were wanting rafts of precocious, sprinting 2yo winners, well tough luck - he never won a race at less than 8f and he ran like a natural stayer. He may have gotten 'elite' mares, but he may not have gotten the type of mare who best suited him; this a mistake many commercial breeders make - choose a stallion for the catalogue page instead of taking all factors into consideration. He had iffy feet - did these 'elite' mares share this trait? Recipe for disaster. 'Elite' often means they produced or are closely related to classic-type horses themselves, which is a great recipe for a St. Leger winner, but not for the US racing program. (This was the problem with Secretariat's early stud career; he needed speedier types, like Lady's Secret's dam.)

My point is, it is entirely too early to write off Empire Maker as a possible sire for a classic-winning type horse.

Rather than debate some of DrugS comments, I've just attach 2 charts for the Blue Grass.

This 1st is the chartcaller's version. This is the less accurate of the two and one could understand why someone looking at it MIGHT think to consider the race in terms of NUMERIC PACE, and conclude that the pace was slow and THUS favored those running towards the front, rather than just seeing the race for what it was: a SUPERIOR performance by the winner.

The 2nd chart utilizes TRAKUS data and is thus about as accurate as it gets. Here we can clearly see that the race, except for the winner, collapsed late, with only Hold Me Back and Terrain, the two off the pace runners, gaining in the lane relative to the winner. GEE, slow pace and the race collapses?
TRAKUS data also shows that General Quarters ran MORE in terms of ground covered than ALL the others in the race.

In terms of finishing position, here's the ground covered, in FEET, by the others in relation to GQ.

-7
-74
-41
-51
-14
-33
-24
-39
-63
-55

We note, then, that ONLY Hold Me Back was COMPETITIVE in terms of ground covered, and that MASSONE, courtesy of the ASININE RIDE by Johnny V on the pacesetter, ran a WHOPPING 74 feet or 8.5 LENGTHS LESS than the winner.

Not to worry, all this is EXPLAINABLE by the SLOW pace. :rolleyes:

I've never seen a wide trip on Keeneland's synthetic track that I didn't like.

I scored with General Quarters - I just don't think his margin of victory over Hold Me Back and Terrain would have been as wide as it was had the pace not been the crawl it figured to be on paper.

Good work Fats

Did you See Rutherienne actually not run the Least distance yesterday? miracle ... - must be the slow pace as well

I scored with him in the Sam Davis.

Let me get his straight, DrugS: GQ took advantage of the SLOW pace, which worked AGAINST the closers. But the REST of the field, which backed up in the stretch, wasn't helped by the slow pace?