November 12, 2009

BC: Dirt to Synth

Horses who made their last start on the dirt were 0 for 21 at the Breeders' Cup this year, making the tally 0 for 43 in the two straight Cups on the synthetic track at Oak Tree, with 34 of the 43 inishing worse than third.. Here are the 43 starters, along with their last-race Beyer Speed Figure on dirt before the Cup and their BSF on Cup Day. Thirty of the 43 starters ran a slower figure switching from dirt to synth, 20 of them by 10 points or more:

 

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 12, 2009 at 11:46:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (55)

---

November 9, 2009

BC '09 Afternumbers

Here are the winning Beyer Speed Figures for the 14 Breeders' Cup races, along with last year's winners and figs and the highest ones recorded in each race since 1991:

 

The 10-point decline in Conduit's winning figure may seem counterintuitive for a repeat winner, but that's how the times came up. Conduit ran 2:23.42 last year and 2:23.75 this year -- 0.33 seconds slower on a quicker course -- while. for example, Goldikova ran 1.14 seconds faster (132.26 vs. 1:33.40) repeating in the Mile. Much as I admire Presious Passion, Conduit's beating him by half a length was probably a weaker performance than his daylight triumph of a year ago.

The only other grass race that went slower than a year ago was the Juvenile Turf (Pounced in 1:35.47 vs. Donativum in 1:34.68) but this seems due entirely to the bizarrely slow pace this time around -- 1:12.47 vs. 1:10.34 last year. This may be a good race in which to downgrade those nearest the slow pace and upgrade those who closed into it.

--Here are Saturday's commingled-only handle and pool totals, which declined about 6 percent with one fewer Cup race on the program. About a third of the decline, though, came simply from the gate scratch of Quality Road, which caused about $2.4 million in refunds.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 9, 2009 at 5:57:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (35)

---

November 7, 2009

BC Saturday Live

2:05 pm: Pounced just got BC Day 2 off to an orderly start, proving clearly best at 2-1 in the Juvenile Turf and becoming the first favorite to win a Cup race this year.

The JT was the start of the first of three pick-4's on today's card; the others are on races 6-9 and 7-10. The Pick-6 runs on races 4-9. Just finished sketching out the $6k play I'll be putting in once for myself and that Capitol OTB in Albany will be putting in a duplicate of on behalf of 30 customers. I'll check the math one more time, punch them into my NYRA Rewards account, then post them here just before the first leg.

Couldn't help laughing as the ABC interviewer in the winner's circle repeatedly addressed winning JT owner Lady Serena Rothschild as simply "Lady." It sounded more like a cabby, or Jerry Lewis, saying "Hey, lady!" than the invocation of a royal title. 

3:00 pm: Here we go. Below is the 13-ticket, $6,000 pick-6 play:

It's a pretty conventional ABC play with a few variations.

Tickets 1-3 require that any 2 of the 3 favorites I like -- Goldikova, Mastercraftsman and Conduit -- win. If so, I'm 4x7x8 in the Sprint, Juvenile and Classic.

Tickets 4-6 allow me to beat any two of those three favorites but thin me out elsewhere --2x4x5 rather than 4x7x8 in the other three.

Tickets 7-12 are basic 5A/1C tickets, keeping me on a thin main with one C allowed.

Ticket #13 was a way to round $5992 up to $6000, using the only two horses in the Classic I didn't use somewhere else.

I'll keep the tickets updated, highlighting any winners that happen to come along.

3:20 pm: Oh well. Alive for five. I know, I know, top Beyer in last on Dancing in Silks, and the figs never lie,  but I just didn't believe it. I even thought I had confirmation to be skeptical when M One Rifle, beaten just a nose by Dancing in Silks in that big-fig Cal Cup Sprint, returned to finish third in the day's first race, the Damascus Stakes.

So who's your champion sprinter now? Dancing in Silks, off victories in the restricted Pirate's Bounty, the restricted Cal Cup Sprint and this? Zensational for his three Grade 1's? Do we start looking at dirt horses like Fabulous Strike and Carter/Vosburgh winner Kodiak Kowboy? Does 3-for-3 turf sprinter (and Turf Sprint winner) California Flag deserve a look? 

3:40 pm: Looks like Dancing in Silks was a lot longer than 25-1 in the early pick-4. Even with $6.80 and $8.80 winners in the first two legs, the smallest $2 pick-4 is $8579 to favored Lookin at Lucky. It's paying $16k to D'Funnybone, $17k to Noble's Promise, and $20k to Aikenite. The biggest payoff is over $280k to William's Kitten.

4:10 pm: Right idea, wrong Euro. Vale of York was twice the price of the other three Europeans in the Juvenile but was the best of them today -- though not necessarily better than Lookin at Lucky, who just missed despite a wide trip from well behind a slow pace. Vale of York came into the race with a record of 2 for 5, having lost all three of his graded stakes tries.

You'd have to say that Lookin at Lucky lost little in defeat and is still the front-runner for the 2-year-old Eclipse. While 20 of the 25 previous Juvenile winners took the title, Lookin at Lucky wouldn't be the first horse to lose the race and still win the title: Dehere (8th to Brocco in 1993) and Easy Goer (2nd to Is It True in 1988) did it. Additionally, Forty Niner in 1987, Maria's Mon in 1995 and Declan's Moon in 2004 all skipped the Juvenile and still won the Eclipse.

Vale of York capped a $71k for $2 pick-4.

4:45 pm: Finally, a true world champion. Goldikova, the best miler on the planet, became the first of last year's winners to succeed in defending her title, mowing down a bearing-out Courageous Cat to beat males in the Mile for the second straight year. The performance may well earn her an Eclipse as the champion grass filly this year since no one has the credentials that Forever Together did last year when she outpolled Goldikova by a vote of 137 to 94. Miesque, who won the Mile in both 1987 and 1988, earned the title both years.

5:30 pm: Another big-fig bomb as 20-1 Furthest Land, whose 106 Beyer Speed Figure winning the Kentucky Cup Classic was the highest by anyone in the field on a synthetic track, ran down Midshipman and held off Ready's Echo to win the Synth Mile.

Anyone else notice a pattern at this Breeders' Cup with 12 of 14 races in the books?

Synth winners: $14.80, $16.80, $8.80, $18.20, $52.60, $63.20, $44.60.

Turf winners: $21.60, $6.60, $6.80, $8.80, $4.80.

Alive 4x5 for a buck in the pick-4 (2-3-5-7/3-4-5-7-10) but it's going to be tough to get it to pay over $6k for $1 to get me out for the pick-6 fiasco.

Speaking of the pick-6, handle was up sharply over last year, from $2.8 to $3.3 million, despite a drop in the guarantee from $3 million to $2 million. The BC Friday pick-6 also was up, from $1.0 to $1.4 million yesterday.

Hard to imagine there are any live tickets that used Dancing in Silks AND Vale of York AND Furthest Land, and the could be paid out for 5-of-6. There's no carryover to tomorrow if no one goes 6 for 6.

There is, however, a $157k carryover at Aqueduct tomorrow.

5:50 pm: I'm usually a big Kenny Mayne fan, and Hank Goldberg's heart is in the race place when it comes to gambling, but their 1-800-HAMMER comedy segment on the ESPN telecast really fell flat. I guess the idea was to make fun of cheesy late-night infomercials, but the net effect was to reinforce the stereotype that horseplayers are desperate and degenerate losers with roughly the same social standing as crackheads.

6:15 pm: Looks like there are four live tickets in the BC pick-6: two to Rip Van Winkle, which would pay $919k each, and one each to Colonel John and Zenyatta for $1.8 million.

Conduit's Turf victory was professional and well-deserved but I can't help feeling that Presious Passion was just as admirable holding second beaten just half a length with his patented open-up/get-caught/fight-back performance. What a cool horse.

Jerry Moss, Zenyatta's owner, couldn't have been cooler himself while refusing to get baited into Horse-of-the-Year mudslinging while being interviewed on ESPN. Asked about Rachel Alexandra, whose name seems to have been virtually forbidden on the ESPN/ABC broadcasts, Moss had nothing but genuinely complimentary things to say about the rival filly, her campaign and her connections.

7:30 pm: What a wonderful victory for Zenyatta, her connections and her fans. It would be nice if we could all bask in it for a while before everyone starts going for the jugular on Horse of the Year debates, but I'm not holding my breath.

Putting that award aside, the Classic almost certainly decided three other titles. Obviously Zenyatta will be the sport's champion older filly or mare again. Gio Ponti probably locked up the older male title with a second in the Classic to go along with his four Grade 1 grass victories. And Summer Bird, who ran fourth, will surely be the champion 3-year-old male off his victories in the Belmont, Travers and JC Gold Cup.

There are still other title situations to consider, handle numbers to be crunched and speed figs to be calculated but it's been a long couple of days. A cocktail is sounding awfully good at the moment.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 7, 2009 at 2:05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (160)

---

BC Ultra P6 Graded Handicap

Somehow the thoughts below on the 64 horses in the final six Breeders' Cup races will magically coalesce into a $6,000 Ultra Pick Six play by early Saturday afternoon, but it hasn't happened quite yet.

All I know for sure is that there are going to be a lot of different zig-zaggy tickets. The way I see this year's sequence is that the Sprint is contentious but manageable, the Juvenile and Classic are almost impossibly wide open, but the three races in between those two skullbusters each has a very legitimate favorite --Goldikova, Mastercraftsman and Conduit. While each is a likely winner, it's unlikely all three will come through, so I will try to construct a multiple-ticket play where I can beat at least one of them. The problem with playing a single caveman ticket in a sequence like this is that even if you narrow down your possible favorite-beaters in those three spots to just one or two alternatives, putting them all on a single ticket increases the cost geometrically while giving undue prominence to your potential upsetters.

Obviously I've got more winnowing and downgrading to do to hit my budget. Perhaps it will all look clearer in the morning.

 

P.S.: If you turned in early and are interested in Friday's handle figures, check out the bottom of the previous post.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 7, 2009 at 3:45:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

---

November 6, 2009

BC Friday '09 Live

1:35 pm(ET): Happy Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships Mostly Filly Championship Friday, or whatever we're calling it this year. Forty minutes until first post at Oak Tree, two hours until the first BC race.

Fast and firm and only five scratches so far on the card: Exuma and Singer Island in the 1st, Toro Bonito in the 2nd, and the two also-eligibles -- Dad's Crazy and In the Slips --in the 4th, the BC Juvenile Fillies Turf.

There are three pick-4's on today's card, on races 1-4, 5-8 and 6-9, and the all-BC pick-6 is on races 3-8. I'm planning to get involved in the pick-6, spreading early and narrowing late. If I can get a price or two home in the two 2-year-old filly races, I'll try to crawl home with a chalky 2x2x3 conclusion (Forever Together and Midday/Ventura and Informed Decision/Music Note, Careless Jewel, Rainbow View.)

I'm not thrilled with the pick-4 menu, since the early and late ones run through non-BC races; I would have preferred one pick-4 on the first four BC races (3-6) as well as the last four (5-8), but the BC didn't want to jeopardize the $500,000 guaranteed pick-6 handle by starting a pick-4 on the same race. The guarantee ought to be safe, since last year's BC Friday pick-6 handled $1,008,267 and concluded with a non-BC race.

We'll be looking at handle trends today and tomorrow but comparisons will be tricky because of the ever-shifting lineups. Last year, Friday's card had 10 races including five BC events; this year it's nine races, six of them BC's. Last year's 11-race Saturday card had nine BC races; this year's it's 10 races Saturday, eight of them BC's.

It looks like the public has figured out the proper favorite in the new Jockey Bet . With $27,945 in the pool as of 1:20 pm ET, the mutuel field has been bet from 8-1 ML to 9-5. Garrett Gomez is the current second choice at 9-2. If you're playing the bet, don't forget that it closes at post time for the Marathon.

2:30 pm: Is it an omen that the first race of BC Friday just went to a British horse switching from grass to synth? Deal Breaker ($13.40), a turf-sprinter overseas who was making his third U.S. start, slipped through at the inside in upper stretch and drew off for Mitchell/Bejarano in 1:42.47 off fractions of 23.72, 46.81, 1:11.25 and 1:36.05.

3:10 pm: The track is definitely quick. Miss McCall ($11.80) just wired the 2nd in 1:15.28 after setting fractions of 22.06, 44.76 and 1:08.75. A second-place finish by 87-1 Merrily, with the two favorites out of the frame, set up a $131,654 for $2 superfecta payoff.

They're already six minutres behind schedule. Post time for the Marathon is now 3:41 pm ET, back from 3:35. Time to make the pick-6 tickets. Mastery is currently the 7-5 favorite.

3:45 pm: Argggh. Picked and needed Cloudy's Knight at 7-1,but got nailed on the wire by Man of Iron, the half-brother to Rags to Riches and Jazil I tossed from my pick-6 play:

Back to the drawing-up-tickets board for the next pick-4.

The early pick-4 probables are paying well considering the first three winners were 5-1, 9-2 and 6-1. The $2 payoffs range from $3397 on favored Lillie Langtry to $24,675 on Elusive City.

4:05 pm: Here are the final odds for the Jockey Bet, which attracted a pool of $117,559:

4:25 pm: The grass is very quick too: Tapitsfly and Rose Catherine ran 2-1 all the way around in the Juvenile Fillies Turf with a mile in 1:34.25. (last year Maram won the race in 1:35.15.) It was an all-American finish with the two favored Europeans,3-2 Lillie Langtry and 6-1 Junia Pepzia, spinning their wheels and ending up 8th and 12th. The early pick-4 came back $6901 for $2.

5:05 pm: She Be Wild ($16.80) won the day's first "championship" race with any actual championship implications, winning the Juvenile Fillies to nailing down the 2-year-old filly Eclipse with a record of 4 for 5 and just a half-length defeat in the Alcibiades. I used the winner as a "B", leaving me alive 2x2x6 in the 5-8 pick-4:

5:30 pm: After Midday's victory in the F&M Turf, who's our champion turf female of 2009? Midday off a single American appearance? Magical Fantasy off her three Grade 1 victories before tanking here? Diamondrella or Dar Re Mi if they win against males tomorrow?

Midday ($6.60) and Forever Together were both 2-1 on the board but Forever Together was the actual favorite by about a $12k margin.

Midday's winning time of 1:59.14 was more than two full seconds faster than Forever Together's 2:01.58 a year ago.

5:45 pm: I couldn't agree more with the commenters complaining about the unconventional camera angles being used by ESPN. It's an insult to the core audience, the equivalent of showing a World Series game from a Gyro-Cam in left field, and the idea that it's going to create new fans is preposterous. Why not show the race live with the pan shot every regular fan wants, and save the artsy angles for replays?

6:15 pm: No question about the Eclipse for champion female sprinter: Informed Decision's second victory of the year over Ventura made her 2009 record 6-for-7 including three Grade 1's, her lone loss coming on a sloppy track she didn't handle in the Ballerina.

Safe to say that the turf is quicker but the Pro-Ride slower than a year ago. Last year Ventura won the F&M Sprint in 1:19.90, this year she fell just short in 1:21.66.

With 5 of today's 6 Cup races in the books, favorites are 0 for 5 and returning Cup-race winners (Muhannak, Maram, Ventura) are 0 for 3.

6:25 pm: The $2 pick-4 payoffs are healthy, ranging from $1167 on Music Note and $1222 on Music Note up to $5311 on Mushka and $10,734 on Lethal Heat.

No pick-6 carryover: Everyone's covered. It looks like there will be somewhere between one (Lethal Heat) and eight (Music Note) winning tickets, paying from $97k to $779k. If those will-pays are correct, there was a healthy jump in this year's BC Friday pick-6 handle, perhaps attributable to its being an all-BC sequence this year instead of ending with the Las Palmas as it did a year ago.

7:00 pm: Life Is Sweet's dominant Ladies' Classic victory both got her out of barnmate Zenyatta's shadow and locked up another older-filly Eclipse for Zenyatta: Even if she runs poorly in the Classic tomorrow, she beat Life Is Sweet three times this year.

The camera choices on the LC were particularly annoying. Going into the first turn, someone thought it would be fun to show the field as it appeared over the heads of spectators who took up the majority of the screen, reducing the horses to dots, then we went in for a long closeup of Robert Landry on Careless Jewel. When they finally pulled back from that shot, Careless Jewel was half a dozen lengths in front, apparently having spurted clear of the field. Yes, some of the new shots are interesting and the HD picture is gorgeous, but it's just impossible to sense the flow of these races when they're presented in a radically different way from every other day of the year.

The third-place finish of favored Music Note and last-place finish by second choice Careless Jewel completed a day of dismal performances by dirt horses. Earlier, horses who made their final pre-Cup start on dirt ran 7th and 8th in the Marathon, 9th and 11th in the Juvenile Fillies and 4th and 8th in the F&M Sprint.

The $4267 for $2 pick-four (BAAB) got me out for the day despite going 0-for-6 on top picks and 3-for-6 in the Pick-6 that returned $155k to five winners. I feel fortunate to have survived Day 1 with no bankroll damage and will be sending it back in and then some tomorrow, including a $6,000 pick-6 play that will get put in twice: I'll buy one on behalf of myself, and New York's six OTB companies will buy a duplicate of my tickets on behalf of 30 customers chosen at random who will share in any proceeds. 

11:30 pm: With one more Cup race but one fewer race overall, handle for the Friday BC card was up 1.2 % over last year, from $47.8 million to $48.4 million. The rearrangement of races, and especially ending multirace sequences with the Ladies' Classic instead of a non-Cup race, led to dramatic gains in the combined pick-4 and pick-6 handle, which was $1.4 million higher than a year ago. Here are the year-over-year comparisons:

The slight gain is somewhat heartening news in a year when almost every major race meeting has suffered sharp declines, but it doesn't really address the question of whether the Cup works better as a two-day, 14-race event than it did at one day and eight races.

Saturday handle has declined dramatically since the event was spread out over two days, from $136 million at Churchill Downs in 2006 to $102 million at Oak Tree last year. Looking only at intrarace handle, betting on 4 of the 5 Cup races for fillies declined from last year, and betting on the three filly races that were moved to Friday a year ago remain down drastically from when those events were run on Saturdays: In 2006 at Churchill Downs, Saturday intrarace betting on the Juvenile Fillies, F&M Turf and Ladies' Classic totalled $30.9 million. Today those same bets totalled only $16.9 million.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 6, 2009 at 1:36:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (41)

---

BC Friday Graded Handicap

Hermis for a day (or two): Here's one horseplayer's graded handicap of Friday's six Breeders' Cup races, with preliminary A-B-C-X multirace-wager grades for each entrant.

I'll be live-blogging all the Friday and Saturday racing. First post Friday is 2:15 pm ET/11:15 am PT for a nine-race card that begins with a pair of N1x allowance races. The first Cup race, the Marathon, is scheduled to go off at 3:35 pm, five minutes after tv coverage begins on ESPN2. 

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 6, 2009 at 2:31:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

---

November 5, 2009

The BC Jockey Bet

The Breeders' Cup is dipping a toe into proposition wagering this year by offering a new bet on which jockey will win the most Cup races Friday and Saturday. My initial inclination was to dismiss it is a silly distraction, but the wager might be more interesting than it first appears.

One word of warning: The bet won't be available everywhere -- New York, Arizona and a few individual tracks including Canterbury and Emerald Downs won't offer it. Also, especially with the bet having received little publicity and its closing at post time for the Marathon, the pool could be very small and prices skewed.

Here's how it works. You bet on which of 13 pre-selected jockeys, or an "all others" mutuel field that's the 14th and final betting interest, will win the most out of the 14 races over two days. If there's a tie -- let's say three of the 13 selected riders each win two races -- there are no tiebreakers and it pays off as a dead heat.

Here are the "entries" for each of the 14 betting interests this year including the Breeders' Cup's morning- line odds on the proposition. Garrett Gomez, who has a Cup-high 11 mounts (plus one also-eligible) is the 3-1 ML favorite:

(Program betting numbers were assigned at random; it might be better to list the riders alphabetically in the future, the way horses are in prop bets such as the Derby Futures.)

If I could bet into the morning line, I would leave the Empire State and make my biggest bet of the weekend on the mutuel field at 8-1, which I think should be the clear favorite over any of the 13 individual riders. And I'm not just saying that because a surprising 6 of my 14 "picks" are in it. It's a 54-horse entry (50 if you don't count the also-eligibles) with representation in all 14 races, 13 horses at 4-1 or less and four morning-line favorites (Blind Luck, California Flag, Zensational, Goldikova.)

As a group the 13 individual riders rate to win a majority of the races, but the field seems to me to have a better chance of winning more than any one of those 13. You obviously have to win more than one race to be the winner -- the chances of a 14-way tie and a $2.10 minus-pool payoff are astronomical -- and that could be tough for some of the individuals.

Mike Smith, for example, is listed at 12-1 on the strength of riding Zenyatta in the Classic, but even if you love her to win the race, what are the chances of Smith's scoring with any of the six other longshots he's riding? If I were looking for an individual to back, I'd say Ryan Moore at 20-1 is a better bet to win two races than Smith at 12-1, because Conduit will be heavily favored in the Turf and Zacinto is the legitimate second or third choice to Goldikova in the Mile.

"The bet is a way for the Breeders' Cup and racing to extend our efforts into prop bets," said Ken Kirchner, who oversees Cup wagering. " We've done horses with Head2Head, Future Bets, and this is an extension of that.  Why cede this territory to the bookmakers and off-shores?  We don't expect a lot of handle but we want to establish that we can do it."

The bet may at first seem silly if you think of it as wagering on the "best" jockey; this is horse racing. If you think of it as a derivative of the results of those races, it could be a wager that offers some value. To me, 8-1 on the field would be the best bet of the weekend.

[Update 6 pm: For the six commenters who wrote to say that I misunderstood the bet and that ONE rider from the field would have to win the most races: No, it's cumulative for the entire field, which I just verified with Ken Kirchner. If five different jockeys in the field ride one winner each, that's five winners for #14.]

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 5, 2009 at 1:35:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

---

November 3, 2009

BC Entries

Here are the fields drawn earlier today for Friday and Saturday's 14 Breeders' Cup races, with post positions, jockeys, trainers, morning-line odds from both Santa Anita and Daily Racing Form's Brad Free (Friday races) and Mike Watchmaker (Saturday races), and each horse's highest winning level, top Beyer Speed Figure on any surface, and top Beyer on the BC race's surface (synthetic or grass.):

The Santa Anita and DRF lines agree on whom the public will favor in 10 of the 14 races, though there are some major differences in price-point predictions: In the Mile, for example, the official morning line has Goldikova at 8-5 while DRF has her at 4-5.

The four races with disagreements on who will be favored are the Juvenile Fillies Turf (ML: Lillie Langtree at 3-1, DRF: House of Grace at 4-1); the Juvenile Turf (ML: Interactif at 4-1, DRF: Viscount Nelson at 3-1); the Turf Sprint (ML: California Flag at 7-2, DRF: Diamondrella at 7-2) and the Classic (ML: Zenyatta at 5-2, DRF: Rip Van Winkle at 7-2).

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 3, 2009 at 10:52:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

---

November 2, 2009

BC by the Beyers

Submitted for your consideration are the Breeders' Cup pre-entrants and their Beyer Speed Figures in five categories: their last race (Last); their career-best figure, regardless of surface (Top); and their career-best figures on dirt (TopDirt), synthetic (TopSynth) and turf (TopTurf).

A notation of "??" instead of a numeral indicates a category where the entrant has run on the surface in question but has not recorded a Beyer, primarily European horses. The "---" notation means that the horse has never run on that surface. The highlighted column (blue for synthetic, green for turf) reflects the surface on which the BC race will be run.

The column headed HWL (Highest Winning Level) to the left of the figures records the best type of race each horse has won -- maiden, allowance, stakes or graded stakes.

In total, 23 horses -- 20 (of the 84 entered) in synth races, and three in grass races -- will be trying a surface for the first time. All eight main-track races have at least one entrant who has never raced on any kind of synthetic track before, including five in the Classic (Giralamo, Quality Road, Rip Van Winkle, Summer Bird, Twice Over) and half of the 14 2-year-olds expected to contest the Juvenile.

I'll repost these figures Tuesday as part of a Master Cheat Sheet after final entries are taken and post positions are drawn. The draw starts at 3:30 pm ET and will be telecast by HRTV.

  

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 2, 2009 at 11:07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

---

November 1, 2009

The Derby and the Classic

It has been 19 years since Unbridled became the last Kentucky Derby winner to win the Breeders' Cup Classic, and nobody seems to think that his great-grandson Mine That Bird has much of a chance to end that drought. Yet something keeps stopping my hand from drawing a big red X through his name.

The first four Derby winners who tried the Classic all won it: Ferdinand as a 4-year-old in 1987, beating Alysheba, who returned to win it the next year, then Sunday Silence and Unbridled as 3-year-olds in 1989 and 1990. Since then, Derby winners are 0 for 11 in the Classic, with Silver Charm's second as a 4-year-old in 1998 the best finish in those 11 tries:

Beyond the discouraging historical record, the case against Mine That Bird goes something like this: He's 1 for 7 this year, his lone victory coming in a pace-collapsed Derby on a sloppy track; his two starts since the Triple Crown, a bad third in the West Virginia Derby and a flat sixth in the Goodwood, suggest he might be off form; his two attempts over Santa Anita Pro-Ride have been the worst placings of his career -- the 6th in the Goodwood and a 12th in last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

The more optimistic view is that he needed his last start off a 10-week layoff and is poised to improve; that his career before the Derby is irrelevant because that was the race where he blossomed and turned into a different horse when allowed to make one run from far back; and that his three strong efforts in the Triple Crown mark him as a horse of quality in a Classic where no one is that much faster. (From a speed-figure viewpoint, his Beyers of 105 and 106 in the Derby and Preakness, as a May 3-year-old, put him in the mix to run the 107-to-110 that may well be good enough to win this Classic.)

He has been likened to Giacomo, another 50-1 Derby winner who never won another important race, but I think that's unfair to him: All three of his Triple Crown efforts were better than Giacomo's. Even if you dismiss the Derby itself, his second to Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness was an excellent effort, and who knows what would have happened in the Belmont if his rider hadn't moved way too soon.

In a race where the three favorites (Zenyatta, Rip Van Winkle and Summer Bird) are a mare who despite all her virtues is coming off two slow victories, and two colts who have never raced on a synthetic track, it may pay to go longshot-hunting. Mine That Bird is unlikely, but not impossible.  

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 1, 2009 at 3:58:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (46)

---