Derby Winners and Losers

[km]

LOSERS

= Dosage Index. Giacomo was the ONLY horse in the race with a listed dosage above the benchmark 4.00 (4.33). Maybe we should be looking for HIGH dosage now!

= Nick Zito; "ya fired" (too many horses and owners to juggle).

= Todd Pletcher; between you and Zito, 0 for 8 in collecting a check from the race.

= Speed Figures. Every major source, every expert, everybody was relying on the numbers to put Bellamy Road (big), Bandini and Afleet Alex into the winners circle. Greater appreciation for our conservative PER ratings which did not over do it and had realistic performance assessments. Horse races are not always won by the fastest previous effort, but by the horse that takes the best advantage of the race circumstances as they unfold. Most of the time that means dealing with the Pace. (but "pace is meaningless" - joe speedfigure)

= Lukas and Baffert; look at those drooping TRN ratings and the pathetic attempt to get any horse into this race. Put a fork in em, they're done.

WINNERS

= Closing Argument. Closest to the blistering pace throughout of the top finishers. May be much better than expected.

= Spanish Road. Ran one hell of a big mile before fading, but still beat his stablemate Bandini for whom he was the "rabbit". Good effort considering they gave him a suicide mission.

= Pace handicappers who saw too much early speed and a big opportunity for closers.

= Santa Anita Derby. Giacomo, Buzzard and Wilko all ran very big. So instead of the SA Derby being coined the "worst prep" by many, it turned out to be the best.

= Horseplayers. $155 million bet on the race and the second largest crowd at CD ever. Massive payoffs all around. Fun, exciting and exhilirating shot in the arm for casual and serious horserace bettors everywhere. T.V. exposure was excellent from all sources: TVG, ESPN and NBC. The winner even made the front cover of today's Sunday LA Times, beating out Putin and Bush!

[tbrown]

In the imortal words of Elmer Fudd, "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabitt!" :eek:

[dehere]

Ken, your best comment was Giacomo beating out bush and Putin as a front page cover picture! Anything that gets bush off the front page of the sunday paper (other than his part in the next scandal of the month of course) is fine by me.

And yep, you are absolutely correct. Blind adherence to any handicapping tool is beyond foolish - it makes you miss golden opportunities. I am probably the biggest guilty party for relying on speed figs for this race, much to my dismay. Hindsight is so easy in this sport and had I had the chance to do it over again, blah, blah, blah! If nothing else my exploration of Brohamer moved giant steps forward after this race.

Now that's not to say that speed figs do not have their place. They led me away from Madcap Escapade and to winners in the first two legs of the big pick 4. Perfect Drift did not lose because of bad speed figs, but rather an absolutely terrible trip. I guess I'm only happy that I wasn't alive into the Derby in this Pick 4 only to see the sub 46 half and sub 1:10 6F run my horse into the ground. It was all there for the asking before the race - I just didn't bother to see it.

There is something else out of this race you didn't refer to - not really just out of this race but out of the week end. My big question is, are past performances meaningless for the next several months until the isolation barns find their place at every track and for every race? How much of the outcome of this race was caused more by the absence of drugs than by the presence of early speed? We handicappers can correct for overlooking pace, but what do we do to compensate for lack of "Allday"?

[timh]

There is something else out of this race you didn't refer to - not really just out of this race but out of the week end. My big question is, are past performances meaningless for the next several months until the isolation barns find their place at every track and for every race? How much of the outcome of this race was caused more by the absence of drugs than by the presence of early speed? We handicappers can correct for overlooking pace, but what do we do to compensate for lack of "Allday"?

Really. Allday's three top patients to run this week were High Limit, Bandini and Sis City.

[clickety]

The outcome of this year's Derby goes some distance towards proving what I've been saying for years: most races are Unpredictable Random Events, and this one, with 20 horses, was no exception. The more horses there are in a race, the higher the "randomness factor," or whatever one would like to call it, goes.

For the Contrarian Investor in the outcomes of horse races, a simple strategy hits this one -- a few minutes before post, bet $1,000/win on each horse with odds above about 40:1. There were ten. This would have included Giacomo. His win payoff of about $51,000 minus the $10,000 invested yields a net profit of about $41,000.

Risky? You bet. But without risk there will be only tiny profits, if any. This isn't a game for widows and orphans.

c.

[tomcat]

The mystry in this race is not so much that Giacamo won but why so many good horses ran so poorly. The pace was the culprit or was it jockeys that didn't rate their horses. The Lukas Derby model of 12-24-48 etc would have been the winner had anyone been aware of the time.
Maybe they need to start carrying watches, like the harness drivers do.

We (John,Mike and I ) discussed the same thing in a Belmont race earlier when a big favorite ran a 44 half at 9f then died in the stretch.

It seem the mentality is to run as fast as you can as far as you can.
:confused: :confused: