The Florida Derby

With the Florida Derby on tap we'll get a look at a few of the contenders and some touted horses, and also another opportunity to look again at training. I'll give my opinions next post, but here are the training stats available. For fun I threw Assault and an Ivers trained horse into this field. You'll see that each of these trainers is very "conventional" in comparison:

Number of breezes and races since 1/1/08:

28 Assault in 1946. one breeze (no races) every 3.17 days, but first one was on 1/21.(Max Hirsch).

22 Tom Ivers Horse, a breeze or race every 4 days.

12 Elysium Fields or every 7.4 days (Tagg).

10 Majestic Warrior or every 8.9 days (Mott).

10 Smooth Air (Bennie Stutts Jr.).

10 Da Terra (Nicholas Zito).

10 Nistle's Crunch (McPeek).

9 Fierce Wind every 10 days (Zito).

9 Hey Byrn (Edward Plesa Jr.).

9 Face the Cat (Pletcher).

8 Tomcito every 11 days since 1/1/8 (Dante Zaneli).

8 Cool Gator (Daniel Vella).

6 BB Frank every 14 days since 1/1/08 (AmyTarrant).

5 Big Brown every 17.8 days since 1/1/08 (Dutrow--this horse has had some hoof problems caused undoubtedly by substandard shoeing.).

Total number of furlongs breezed and raced since 1/1/08:

118f Assault in 1946 (Assault had yet to race by 3/30/46)

264f Ivers Horse (Ivers breezes 2 x 6f every four days)

70f Smooth Air

66f Elysium Fields

54f Fierce Wind

54f Get Byrn

53f Nistle's Crunch

49f Da Tara

48f Majestic Warrior

47f Face The Cat

42f Tomcito

40f Cool Gator

34f BB Frank

27f Big Brown


There's a difference in long term conditioning since 1/1/08 and immediate race prep for the last 45 days, see below:


Number of breezes, races and furlongs since 2/15:

Assault from 2/15/46 to 3/30/46 has 19 breezes totaling 92 furlongs

Ivers Horse 11 breezes, 132 furlongs

Smooth Air 5 breezes and races totalling 37f. Last 4 days out.

Elysium Fields 6 breezes and races totalling 34 furlongs. Last 4 days out.

Tomcito 5 totalling 32f. Last 12 days out.

Big Brown 5 totalling 27f. Last 4 days out.

Hey Byrn 4 totalling 27f. Last 7 days out.

Nistle's Crunch 5 totalling 27 f. Last 7 days out.

Cool Gator 5 totalling 27f. Last 5 days out.

Fierce Wind 5 totalling 25f. Last 5 days out.

Da Tara 5 totalling 24f. Last 9 days out.

Majestic Warrior 6 totalling 24f. Last 4 days out.

Face The Cat 4 totalling 20f. Last 5 days out.

BB Frank 2 totalling 12f. Last 11 days out.

Each of these conventional trainers have ratched up their training of late in preparation for the Florida Derby. Do none of these trainers recognize or agree with the sort of long term training received by Assault or the Iver's horse?

Which of the above factors will be important in the race? For Big Brown who has done a lot of work recently, but very little for the year, will that colt have enough "bottom" (I dislike these conventional terms) to respond when the question is asked? All of them have breezed frequently by these conventional standards last 45 days, but Tomcito last worked 12 days out, and a lot of them worked 7 or more day out. How close to the race do they need to breeze to be fully competitive? If you'd ask Tomcito's trainer would the answer be "not very"?

There's less that separates this group in terms of training than the field of the Tampa Bay Derby. I'll try to put it together next post.

Training:
Normal off day 3/26. We'll commence again tonight on 3/27.