Derby AE List

[Linny]

The fact is that there are now effectively 19 slots in the gate and the rules are set and understood. Trainers/owners know the rules and if they don't want to be left on the sidelines they need to start accumulating graded earnings as early and often as possible. If it means taking a late October maiden breaker from Belmont to Delta for the Jackpot, so be it. Skip the $200k Remsen and go to Delta or the CashCall Futurity. If your horse is a Dunkirk or Imperial Council with allowance wins but no graded $$$, if you put you stock into one graded race and lose, you are probably watching come Derby Day. (It lookes like Shug will give IC 2 graded races so he's got a better shot than Dunkirk.)

Every year someone comes along sobbing about how X is SO GOOD but probably wont get in because of the rules. The same rules apply to all. It's not the rules that kept him out. It's the inability, for whatever reason to rack up enough graded earnings that kept him out. Remember, if Smarty Jones was third in the Ark. Derby he probably wouldn't have gotten to the Derby at all. That was pretty risky. If Dunkirk runs 3rd in the Fla Derby he probably wont make the field this year. Last year I liked Denis of Cork and he damn near got left off because his owner's "racing manager" sent his closer into a race on a speedway and he finished off the board. If they had failed to get in it was no one's fault but the connections.