The Main Contenders

Who are they and how do we pick them? Readers will know on this blog it's other than a handicapping exercise. Instead of picking the winner by our best handicapping effort, I'll try instead to identify the smartest trained horses, and we'll see how they do.

How to identify the "best trained". Let's make this other than subjective. The best trained horse will have to meet certain objective criteria:

1. Most works/races for the year.
2. Most furlongs breezed/raced for the year.
3. Most furlongs breezed/raced last 45 days
4. Most breezes/races last 45 days
5. Most track work in the 10 days before the derby.
6. Closest and fastest breezes to the Derby.
7. Longest breezes of the last two weeks.

This should give us a pretty good idea of the type of training and allow us within reason to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of prepared horses. The results should also reveal the type of training done these days by the majority of the Derby trainers, for, I'll confide right off the bat, from what I've done so far there's a lot of similarity. There are however some surprising results.

To begin the weeding out process I'll take all the Derby PPs and determine in order of most volume to least, how many works/races for the year and then how many works/races 3/15 to 5/3 (I'm including the planned works in the next few days).

Most to least:
18/7 Pyro
18/6 Tale of Ekati--is Tagg working his horses. Why's Big Truck look so weak?
17/7 Colonel John
17/7 Bob Black Jack
17/7 Z Fortune
16/6 Anak Nakal--here's a suprise.
16/5 Big Truck--is he weak because he worked less recently?
15/6 Smooth Air--this horse has worked long, but average frequency.
14/6 Adriano
14/6 Cool Coal Man
14/6 Dennis Of Cork
14/6 Court Vision
14/5 Behind The Bar
13/6 Monba
13/6 Z Humor
13/5 Gayego
13/5 Cowboy Cal--this horse was injured for a while.
12/6 Recapturetheglory
11/7 Big Brown--he's played catch up. Tied from most since 3/15 though!!!

Notice I declined to include the fillies. Besides my usual "what's the point", fillies are lightly trained and endangered by racing against these. Rags survived the Belmont, barely. But, you want to know, so--Eight Belles: 8/4--is this ridiculous, that they're considering this horse to compete against the above? (Edit: this becomes 9/5 by Derby day.

What jumps out? Gayego for openers. If you watch the Arkansas Derby, yes he was in front at the wire, but barely moving. Scratch this horse from the contenders list on the above alone. And when we put it down on paper maybe there's too much hype over Smooth Air.

Nor will I take Pletcher or Mott's horses seriously based on the above. They've made their bed with light training and we'll see the desultory results on Derby day, I feel quite confident. Only Big Brown and Recapturetheglory get a pass here. The first started late but finished strong, and Rousell's horse is doing two mile gallops that I want to look at.

The whinnied down list next post. I'll look at furlongs and get to the crucial aspects of appropriate spacing and offday work to the Derby.

Training:
Groovin' Wind survived his mutilation. He's walking around eating grass and grain as if nothing happened. Reminder that they're just animals and probably very little goes on in those small brains. Kinder and gentler Wind, though. Art is back grazing in the pasture instead of hiding in the barn to avoid another attack. Both youngsters had a spirited riderless workout adopted to the off time. A little speed. They're flyers, and I'm happy about that.