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Exploring Derby Qualification: Points and Analysis
SportsGrid
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1/31/2025
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Sports
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00:00
and we start Alexa on the inside with kinetic control.
00:04
So all of these races are offered
00:06
with 20 points to the winner,
00:07
20 points to the winner, 10 points to the runner-up,
00:10
six points to third, four to fourth, and then two to fifth.
00:13
All you have to do is finish top five
00:15
and you pick up a couple of points.
00:16
If you win one of these races though,
00:18
you're probably pretty close to being in.
00:21
So this is a big, big weekend.
00:23
Just one win in one of these big races puts yourself in.
00:26
What do you think about-
00:27
Go ahead.
00:28
It was like 40-ish points, you know,
00:30
to get a spot in the derby usually.
00:32
So you're halfway there
00:33
if this is your first one that you've won.
00:35
And some years you'll need a little more, a little less,
00:37
just based on like horses that get hurt,
00:40
how deep the field is,
00:41
maybe a couple of races where you'll have the same winner
00:44
win and you won't have a lot of points distributed there.
00:47
Not the biggest fields in the world,
00:48
but I think of all three of them,
00:50
we've got the most interesting one first.
00:52
Cause I think there might be three or four different horses
00:54
that could come out of this race
00:56
that could be really, really strong horses.
00:59
We start with Kinetic Control,
01:00
who comes off of a win last time out,
01:02
took him four starts to break his maiden,
01:04
but he was able to put it all together
01:06
in that most recent race.
01:08
It's not as if I have a problem with him overall,
01:10
he's just gonna face some tough foes in here
01:12
and some horses to the outside of him
01:14
that have other early speed.
01:16
Yeah, you know, that race he won, he wired the field,
01:19
but in the prior races, he didn't win, got second.
01:21
He came from off the pace.
01:23
So I don't know that he needs to be on the front end,
01:26
which is probably a good thing
01:27
since I do think there's a lot of pace in here
01:29
and horses who will want that spot.
01:31
But I mean, it's gonna have to improve
01:33
and trainer Dale Romans does not have
01:36
very encouraging statistics for horses coming off a win,
01:39
6% win rate, horses coming off a layoff, 9% win rate.
01:43
So those are some tough stats to put faith behind.
01:46
Yeah, in a big, tough field like this.
01:48
The number two, Ferocious,
01:50
he was one of the top five or so two-year-olds last year,
01:55
very talented, but he's kind of been his own worst enemy,
01:58
Alexa, because he's a little bit quirky.
02:00
If you notice and you kind of go through his races,
02:02
he's kind of had some issues in each one.
02:04
In the hopeful, he was sort of floundering.
02:06
And then when Chancellor McPatrick came up alongside him,
02:09
it like kicked him into another gear.
02:10
He looked like he was gonna be done at the top of the lane.
02:13
Then in the Breeders Futurity,
02:14
he's banging around in the gate before.
02:16
He doesn't really get out of the starting gate
02:18
all that well.
02:19
He runs into some traffic in the Breeders Cup,
02:21
but the Connections decided to put some blinkers on him.
02:24
And for those of you who may not know,
02:26
when you add blinkers to a horse,
02:28
it can do a couple things,
02:29
but mainly it will give them more focus.
02:31
They'll just be looking at what's ahead.
02:33
They won't be looking all over the place
02:35
and getting distracted by different things.
02:37
And it should also give them a little bit more speed,
02:40
just have them more forwardly placed in there.
02:42
If those are the cases and they're able to kind of tweak
02:45
a couple of the small issues he had,
02:47
he could be the horse to beat in here.
02:49
Yeah, I mean, horses are herd animals, right?
02:52
So you'll see before the race, they like to pair up,
02:54
and during the race, a lot of times they will pair up
02:56
down the backstretch.
02:57
So you hear trainers talking about it,
02:59
you hear jockeys talking about it.
03:00
Some horses need someone to run at,
03:03
they need somebody to-
03:04
To target.
03:05
To target, yeah.
03:06
So, but these horses are so young, right?
03:09
That was two-year-old year.
03:10
They're just figuring it all out.
03:11
They're just babies.
03:12
So I think he's very, very talented.
03:15
I don't love that he has a little bit of a pattern
03:17
of being a disappointing favorite
03:18
in some of those recent starts,
03:20
but I mean, they were super competitive, difficult fields.
03:24
So I think he's one to beat.
03:27
Tappan Street is the number three.
03:28
I was joking with you before we started.
03:30
I kind of got the feels when he won in his career debut,
03:33
where it looked to me like this is a horse
03:35
that could be a derby horse,
03:37
because he started to back up in his race.
03:40
He was moving back to fourth,
03:41
and then all of a sudden, he got a little bit of daylight,
03:44
and you could see him stretch his legs
03:46
when he got a chance to move.
03:47
He seemed like distance should be no problem for him.
03:51
Talking about the number three, Tappan Street.
03:54
Yeah, this horse is very, very talented, very interesting.
03:57
Only been out one time, though.
03:58
So sometimes when those horses step up in class
04:02
and step up against tougher fields,
04:05
it's a turning point.
04:06
Either they rise to the occasion or they don't.
04:09
But very low odds, morning line of just three to one,
04:12
but should be a player in here if he steps up.
04:15
Guns Loaded won the Mucho Macho Man
04:18
in his most recent start, so he's proven.
04:20
And what's nice about him,
04:21
he's probably one of the quicker in this field, Alexa.
04:24
When we look at the pace projector, as you can see,
04:27
he's the number four,
04:28
so they have him slightly ahead of Tappan Street.
04:31
And he could be one that gets loose on the front end
04:34
in here.
04:35
Yeah, I'm confident saying that Guns Loaded
04:37
is an early running style horse.
04:40
I'm not confident saying that necessarily
04:41
about Tappan Street.
04:42
We've only seen him run one time,
04:43
so we don't really know what his running style is yet.
04:46
He might be an early horse,
04:47
but he might have tactical speed
04:49
and be able to roll with the punches.
04:51
But Guns Loaded definitely wants that lead.
04:53
And luckily, it doesn't look like there's anybody
04:56
faster than him early, so hopefully he can break well,
04:59
get the position he wants.
05:00
They did spend $800,000 on him as a yearling,
05:03
so they have very high expectations
05:05
for this horse on the derby trail.
05:06
Irat Ortiz Jr. will be aboard.
05:08
We move to the number five.
05:09
He's not joking.
05:11
He's a grade three winner on the synthetic,
05:13
but his only dirt start, it's hard to get a gauge
05:17
because he completely missed the break
05:19
and he was just behind.
05:20
So they'll give him another shot on the dirt,
05:21
and you'll see this a lot of times
05:23
where at this point of the year,
05:24
if you have a good horse on the turf
05:26
or a good horse on the synthetic,
05:27
sometimes you just take a shot and you see,
05:30
is this the type of horse who can be in the derby
05:32
or in some of those triple crown races?
05:34
You have to.
05:35
I mean, I'm a horse owner.
05:36
I manage them.
05:37
I mean, this is what you're doing it for, right?
05:40
You want to know if you have a champion
05:42
and can run in a $5 million race
05:44
in the most prestigious race in the world.
05:46
So yeah, they're taking a shot.
05:48
They're not joking about it,
05:49
but like you said, he's a wild card in here
05:52
because he had that really bad effort,
05:55
but there was shipping to a new location,
05:58
new surface, all sorts of things at play,
06:01
some traffic, some issues.
06:02
So we really don't know if he hates the surface
06:05
or if it was just a bad run.
06:09
Final two horses in this field,
06:11
probably horses that you can get
06:12
from off the pace a little bit.
06:13
Burning Glory is one where if they go fast upfront, Alexa,
06:17
he's probably the best of the closers,
06:19
but that would kind of be my negative on him as well
06:22
at Gulfstream Park because it's not the easiest place
06:25
to try to come from way, way out of it.
06:27
And we're not really sure how fast
06:30
they'll be going in here early on, right?
06:31
Guns Loaded could be there, but then maybe Tappan Street.
06:34
I don't know if they're going to be lining up.
06:36
So I think he'll pick up some pieces late,
06:38
but I just don't know how fast
06:40
they'll go early to set it up for him.
06:42
I agree.
06:42
I mean, I think that closing style is like advantageous
06:45
from like a pace setup, but again, it's Gulfstream.
06:48
So you don't want to be super far back.
06:51
Has been an improving form, but the last race he won,
06:55
none of those horses he beat that day
06:57
have really come back to do anything super spectacular.
07:00
But you know, this is a Juddmont home bred.
07:02
And so for those who don't know,
07:04
there are major players in horse racing
07:06
founded by the late Prince Khalid of Saudi Arabia.
07:08
They've won best breeder, best owner many years.
07:10
So they tend to have good horses.
07:12
Round out the field with Burnham Square.
07:16
He made a big early move last time out to the front end
07:19
and his first two races were pretty good.
07:20
He was knocking on the door
07:21
and then finally put it all together.
07:23
Do you think he fits with this group?
07:24
Do you like him at all here?
07:26
I like him all right.
07:27
I've included him underneath.
07:28
I think he's shaping up to be a presser closer type.
07:31
Hopefully can stay a little bit closer to the pace.
07:34
He has three siblings and all are winners,
07:36
which from a breeding standpoint is pretty impressive.
07:40
There are our selections there.
07:41
We have the same top two,
07:43
just in a slightly different order.
07:44
I'll go three, two, six, four.
07:46
Alexa with the two, three, seven, four.
07:49
So just one difference for the two of us there.
07:52
We both kind of key in on a couple of the same runners.
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