I've put together a meaningless chart, but meaningless only in the sense that there is no symetry back to Charismatic (has it really been 11 years?) between when and where a future Derby winner wrapped up his two year old campaign, how long he was turned out, and when and where he came back as a three year old.
It is interesting to see how many raced in January previous to Giacomo, a trend continued by Barbaro, but the past three years have seen the 3 YO 1st race move into late February and March.
Food for thought as we pour over this year's "contenders".
2 comments:
Turk,
I don't think you can possibly draw any conclusions from the past Derby winners and apply them to this year's crop.
Last year was supposedly the first "clean" (ie. non-Winstrol) Derby and the sloppy going mucked up things enough so a plucky little 50-1 longshot rode the Bo-rail to victory. Even those results are unreliable.
I'm going to look at these horses in terms of what they were bred for in conjunction with running style and preparation. My take is that if the Derby winner comes out of California, there won't be a Triple Crown winner. If there's a Triple Crown winner in this lot, it will be a beast from the east.
I'll check back soon and look forward to getting together sometime in late Feb. or early March to discuss if there's any value in the Derby futures.
Hey Rob,
I agree, I can't say we can draw any conclusions from this except some broadstrokes that horses are running less often and starting later on the Derby trail then they did in the past, at least the past few years.
I'm more lazy, I'm just going to watch the races until early April and let the horses tell me who are the contenders and who are not. I tried that last year and even after watching Mine That Bird I wouldn't have put him in the top 10 in a million years. Oh well!
Turk
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