Friday, May 02, 2008

Picking the Derby Winner

I'm a firm believer that history repeats itself at the Kentucky Derby. It does so in the fashion that the same type of horse usually wins the race. Therefore, even though a full field of 20 usually shows up at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, its easy to eliminate a lot of the horses going to the starting gate.

This year based on past history I eliminated 10 horses and was left with 10 horses, but I was still in a quandry. The best horse clearly looks like Big Brown. I mean clearly. But he's only three times and nobody has won that way in almost 100 years, so I don't know what to do with Big Brown.

Of the remaining 10 horses, the horse that I seem to like best is Colonel John. But the Santa Anita Derby winner has never won on the dirt. Never. He's run all his previous efforts on the synthetic surfaces. Some horses transition marvelously, some look lost. Colonel John seems to be handling the Derby surface marvelously working fabulously since arriving from Southern California. The problem with putting any cash on CJ is that we won't know for sure about him until they turn for home tomorrow.

So for me that would leave Gayego. Gayego won a relatively weak Arkansas Derby after coming east from Southern California where he couldn't beat Colonel John. But at least we know he won't totally not like the dirt surface.

So my plan is simply to play those three horses with some of the others, that I think have a shot based on history. Those horses include Cool Coal Man, Tale of Ekati, Court Vision, Z Fortune, Visionaire, Bob Black Jack, Monba, and Cowboy Cal.

So remember, if the best horse wins it's Big Brown. If the horse I like best wins its Colonel John and if he doesn't take to the surface I'll throw Gayego in there.

But when you've got a blog, you've got to make a pick. I'll stay with Colonel John.

2 comments:

  1. That was sad, what happened to the philly after the race. What a shame to see a talented horse go down like that.

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  2. Moose - It was a definite shame. Can't believe that PETA is trying to blame the jockey. Unfortunately, in horse racing these things happen. I'm fine if PETA wants to argue that Horse Racing is inhumane. I can then choose to agree or disagree with them. But to blame the jockey on pure speculation, and speculation that appears to be false, seems to be going too far. They owe the kid an apology.

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