Hard races, it seems to be the topic of the week following the fantastic duel we saw in the Tampa Bay Derby. Immediately following the race a few commentators even speculated that it may be a tough ask for these horses to build on this race.
I decided to take a look at some statistics to see if there was any relevance. It is a difficult thing to try and quantify with just numbers, because what is or isn't a hard race on a horse cannot be simply defined by how fast they ran or what the margins were. What tires out specific horses is usually specific to that horse. But I'll try to paint a picture anyway. All statistics are calculated from 1996 to the present.
The first thing we have to look at is whether or not horses who have won by large margins do better in the Derby than those than don't.
Won last prep by 5 lengths or more: 15-1-0-1
War Emblem and Afleet Alex fit this criteria and did very well but the list mostly contained horses like Balto Star, Millennium Wind and Bellamy Road. I think its clear that in some cases the horses clearly were not battle tested.
Won any 3yo race by 5 lengths or more: 41-3-1-2
Here we widened the parameters to look at any horse who exhibited dominance (as defined by the winning margin) over any field they faced as a 3yo. Monarchos and Smarty Jones were the most notable. The Impact Value for this factor is about 1.20 meaning that horses who win a race as a 3yo by a wide margin have performed slightly better than their statistical expectation, which is equal to 1.00
Won last prep by less than 5 lengths or finished within 3 lengths of the winner: 104-10-7-10
This stat obviously describes the majority of the field (53% to be more exact) yet over the last 11 years this 53% has accounted for 90% of the winners which yields an impact value of 1.71.
So based on this data one would have to conclude that a horse is really not disadvantaged by winning a race by a large margin. Nor is it a negative to run a competitive race in their last prep. I might slightly shade against those who completely ran off in their last prep only because it often means that they have peaked too soon. But what is the real negative factor here?
Did not win final prep or finish within 3 lengths of the winner: 75-0-1-4
These are the horses you really should be steering clear of. Horses who are trounced in their final prep are rarely up to turning it around on Derby day.
How does this affect Street Sense and Any Given Saturday? It doesn't or at least statistically speaking if the TB Derby was their last Derby prep they would not be disadvantaged. Derby winners like Thunder Gulch, Silver Charm, Grindstone, Real Quiet, Funny Cide and Barbaro all had tough races in one of their two final preps and I think it served them well enough on the big day.
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2 comments:
been away due to some physical problems/ have missed the last two weekends of racing/ please note i think kennedys corridor is one of the best of its kind and if one reads all and compares to other opinion makers, it is as good or better than several others combined/ one thing is that some opinions necessarily have to change as circumstances change/but the the stats don't lie and if a handicapper wants to put his own inerpretation on those stats , so be it/ the end result for me, is not to seek perfection in an imperfect game and to have formulated some picture of who is going to be in the hunt for a particular race and especially for the up coming triple crown races/ handicappers ought to be able to take information and opinions at face values and take responsibility for understanding for what is being said and formulate one's own opinion/ keep up the good work/ chicaco gerry
Glad to have you back gerry, hope you are feeling better.
Jared
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