And no, I don't have a Derby contender list yet. Too many noms with thin records.
I suppose Algorithms is the strongest candidate at present. He hasn't lost a race, his speed figures are impressive, and, being by Bernardini out of a Cryptoclearance mare, he should be able to stretch out. But he's so lightly raced. I wouldn't be terribly put off if he were to lose a race between now and May 5th, but I would be concerned if he threw in a complete clunker. I don't like to back horses that show evidence of quitting or of not wanting to compete. Plus, Algorithms could be fragile. He needed five months off between his first and second race. But I wish the horse and his connections well.
Still, that's only one horse on my contender list.
Many of the other nominations are mystery horses to me. I'm just a regular person, with no access to track scuttlebutt or backside buzz, and I have no idea how talented these horses might be or how serious their connections are about chasing the Derby dream with them.
Take, for instance, Souper Speedy, the nice Indian Charlie colt who pulled off a shocker in a maiden race at Aqueduct and validated his talent with a 2nd place finish in the 9f Remsen. You'll remember that he led from the gate but got caught by O'Prado Again right before the wire, and that the hot El Padrino could do no better than 3rd in that race. And then Souper Speedy disappeared. The PPs tell me that he has started breezing again for Albertrani at Palm Meadows, but other than evidence of a few slow works, I have no clue what's up with that horse.
By my quick count, the nominations include 59 horses that have raced twice, 52 horses that have raced only once, and another 79 with no starts at all. Even if my numbers are off a little bit here and there, they tell me that, out of almost 400 nominated horses, 190, about half of the total, have little to no race experience.
What the _aitch_?
There oughta be a law
I don't know how I'm supposed to figure out how to cap these lightly raced horses. And figuring out is critical if I want to feel confident about putting together a list of contenders.
Cases in point: In pulling up my Derby nomination lists from last year (I have two sets, one dated February 18th and another February 22nd), I don't see Animal Kingdrom's name on either one. Nor do I see it in Bloodhorse's "2011 Triple Crown Prospects" publication--my "tool for handicapping the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes"--that I downloaded on February 20th. Animal Kingdom had only run twice--in poly events in Fall 2010--so he wasn't considered a contender. He didn't run again until March, when he ran 2nd in an optional claimer on the Gulfstream lawn and then won the Vinery Spiral on the poly at Turfway.
Similarly, when the noms list came out in February 2008, Big Brown wasn't considered a contender because he had run only once (in a maiden turf event at Saratoga in September 2007). He didn't run again until March at Gulfstream, and the only reason we saw him on dirt then is because the race got pulled off the turf. We next saw him in the FL Derby, and naturally, after that devastating performance, he became the Derby favorite.
I guess what I'm saying is--and I could easily be wrong--but I'm not super-confident in the chances of Alpha (5 starts) or Union Rags (4 starts) or Hansen (4 starts) or (fill-in-the-blank). These contenders look suspect to me. They haven't run often enough or well enough to inspire me with confidence. Yes, one of them might jump up and wow me; frankly, I hope so. At the same time, I must say that it's entirely possible that one of those 190 lightly raced or zero-raced nominated horses could rise up and become a major contender by mid-March.
So, I might need another four to six weeks to put together a Derby contender list
