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Discussing Kentucky Derby Prospects and Key Horses at Aqueduct
SportsGrid
Follow
1/31/2025
Category
🥇
Sports
Transcript
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00:00
20 points will be awarded to the winner.
00:02
There's only a field of seven in here,
00:04
Alexa, and to be honest,
00:06
the Withers and some of the New York
00:08
races earlier in the season,
00:10
they haven't been as strong races
00:12
when you're talking about developing
00:14
Kentucky Derby prospects,
00:15
but a good horse can come from anywhere
00:17
and one of these horses,
00:19
maybe a couple of them will end up in
00:20
the starting gate come Kentucky Derby Saturday.
00:23
Let's start with Global Steve.
00:25
So this is a mile and an eighth race at Aqueduct.
00:27
Global Steve is two for two.
00:29
He won both of his races over at parks.
00:31
One of them was on a sloppy track.
00:33
He will stretch out though for the first time.
00:35
He goes two sprints to a route in here.
00:38
How do you think he stacks up?
00:39
Do you give him a chance with this group?
00:42
You know, interesting.
00:43
Like you said, undefeated.
00:44
They're adding that distance today,
00:46
but when his trainer and jockey team up,
00:48
they've won 28% of the time.
00:49
So, and that's with a very large sample size
00:52
of over 80 horses.
00:53
So that's a very significant stat,
00:55
but his speed figures are a little bit
00:57
of a cut below some others in here.
00:58
So I do think we'll need an improvement,
00:59
but I think it's possible for him to show us
01:03
an improvement based on what we've seen so far.
01:05
And the numbers that Alexa was referencing,
01:07
you can find those in the daily racing form,
01:10
past performances.
01:11
And we always give you a code where you can go get
01:13
all access past performances.
01:15
We have an entire database of statistics.
01:18
You can go through every horse,
01:19
their last five years, everything.
01:21
And you can like formulate the stats however you want.
01:24
It's just like a wealth of information there.
01:26
You can check that out with the
01:27
all access past performances over at drf.com.
01:30
Let's move to Surfside Moon.
01:32
His lone win came going a mile on the turf.
01:35
So he's kind of a tough read for me,
01:37
but I will say this rider,
01:39
Ceviche who came down from Woodbine
01:41
and you and I knew are very familiar with,
01:43
he's been fantastic so far.
01:45
And a very aggressive rider seems to just pick horses up
01:48
and put them on the front end.
01:49
So I'll give that a positive,
01:51
but I just need to see more from him overall on the dirt.
01:54
Yeah, I'm not really feeling him in here.
01:57
I didn't see the kind of improvement I wanna see
02:00
from a two-year-old that makes me think,
02:02
oh, this is a derby caliber horse.
02:04
But then again, he's been off since October
02:07
and running it too is hard.
02:10
And sometimes they do need that time
02:12
to grow into themselves and learn.
02:14
So it'll be interesting to see this three-year-old debut.
02:17
But again, workouts coming into this
02:19
are really, really slow.
02:20
So I don't love seeing that either.
02:23
The number three, Corvus, is a New York bred
02:26
and his lone win came against New York bred.
02:28
So this is an open race where he's gonna be facing horses
02:31
that were bred all over.
02:33
He did lose to a couple of nice horses though
02:35
in his last few races, Alexa.
02:37
A horse named Sand Devil, who is two for two, he lost to.
02:40
He also lost to Cyclone State,
02:42
who you'll see all throughout the running lines
02:44
of a lot of these horses.
02:45
And that horse has won their last three,
02:48
including the Jerome last time out.
02:50
Can you make a case for Corvus?
02:52
I mean, Corvus has been steadily improving every race,
02:56
I think.
02:56
I think this is gonna be a very tough spot for him.
03:00
I don't know if I think he can win.
03:01
I think he could hit the board maybe,
03:03
kind of round out the bottom of the exotics.
03:05
But he should be trying to come from off the pace.
03:08
And if you look at the time from U.S. pace projector,
03:10
it does indicate this should favor the front runners,
03:14
the ones on the lead a little bit more.
03:15
Yeah, that might be the problem.
03:16
He's gonna be coming from way, way out of it here,
03:18
maybe more of a horse to pick up some pieces.
03:21
Uncle Jim has raced twice.
03:22
He won his career debut,
03:24
and then he came back in his second start.
03:25
He lost to Cyclone State,
03:27
who we see in a lot of these horses' past performances.
03:31
Cyclone State came back to win the Jerome in his next start.
03:34
And I'll say for Uncle Jim,
03:36
it was his first try going long.
03:38
He kind of loomed up, he took a shot,
03:40
and then he just faded.
03:41
He tired a little bit.
03:42
We see horses do that
03:43
when they have that progression sometimes.
03:45
They have to kind of build the foundation up,
03:47
going a little bit longer.
03:49
I don't really have knocks on him, Alexa.
03:51
He's just gonna need to improve
03:53
to get the better of some of the top horses in here.
03:55
My only knock on him is the odds.
03:59
We're given three-to-one morning line odds,
04:01
which, again, is just a guess of what the odds
04:03
are gonna be when the race goes off.
04:04
It's all determined by how much money
04:06
people wager on each horse.
04:08
But I would want more of him to bet him.
04:12
That's the key, right?
04:13
You want more value on that.
04:14
So as gamblers, we have to be patient.
04:18
We also have to demand that value.
04:20
Remember, there's so many ways we can get action in.
04:22
You don't always have to feel like,
04:23
I have to throw some on this.
04:24
Wait, be disciplined, especially if you're someone
04:27
that's watching this and you're playing baseball,
04:29
football, basketball.
04:30
There's a lot of different options.
04:32
Always be disciplined and demand value as a gambler.
04:35
Let's move to Moe Quality, Alexa, the number five,
04:38
who we both like because his overall body of work,
04:42
it's really good.
04:43
I love horses like this that I can go through
04:45
each of his races and they make sense.
04:47
His career debut, he finished second.
04:49
He lost to a really nice Wesley Ward horse
04:51
that is named Touchy, who's a stakes caliber horse.
04:55
Then in his second start, Moe Quality wins.
04:58
He breaks his maiden over at Churchill Downs.
05:00
Then in his third start, he runs in the Smarty Jones
05:03
in a stakes race at Oaklawn.
05:05
He finishes second that day,
05:06
loses to a nice horse named Cole Battle.
05:08
And one of the horses he finishes in front of,
05:11
Kale's Angel, is a really nice sprinter.
05:13
He came out of that race and he won a sprint stakes race
05:17
and then the next time out,
05:17
he just makes a lot of sense in here.
05:20
Yeah, I mean, never been worse than second.
05:22
And if you're looking at the composition of those races,
05:25
I mean, two of those were 11 horse field.
05:26
So obviously if a horse is getting second
05:29
in a five horse field, it's much more impressive.
05:31
And an 11 horse field when they're having
05:33
a lot more competition, you know, handled the distance,
05:37
handled the move up in class pretty well.
05:39
So I would expect improvement in the second time out
05:42
going long distance, he makes sense.
05:43
We move to Captain Cook.
05:45
Shout out to Jesse Pinkman.
05:48
Now, Captain Cook was a winner last time out
05:51
and it was a really impressive win over at Aqueduct,
05:53
but it was in the slop.
05:55
So when a horse wins like that on a sloppy track,
05:57
I'm always a little trepidatious, right?
05:59
Because was it the sloppy track that did it
06:02
or was it just the improvement?
06:04
But he's certainly heading in the right direction.
06:06
Absolutely, I mean, one by over nine lengths.
06:08
So you're like, wow, but slop carries speed
06:11
and also can be hard for other horses to make up ground.
06:15
So makes sense in here, definitely could be one to beat,
06:19
but getting that morning line favorite odds.
06:22
Check, check, check, check, check, check.
06:24
Omaha, Omaha, Omaha, as Peyton Manning would say,
06:28
we round out the field with Omaha, Omaha.
06:30
Another one who was behind Cyclone State last time out.
06:33
He was second in the Jerome
06:35
and you kind of know what you're gonna get
06:36
with this guy, Alexa.
06:37
He's just a deep closer.
06:38
He's gonna drop back.
06:40
He's gonna hope they go fast early.
06:41
You see him way behind on the pace projector.
06:44
He's the number seven, far behind everyone else.
06:46
But if they go fast, he will come closing.
06:49
He will, I have included him as my second choice in here.
06:52
He's used to running long distances.
06:54
He's that closer, the added distance should help,
06:57
but it's just, favoring front runner sucks,
07:00
but I like Omaha, Omaha.
07:02
So let's get two selections
07:03
as we get set for our next commercial break.
07:06
Alexa and I will both put the five,
07:08
low quality with that versatility.
07:10
He has some speed, but he can pass horses.
Recommended
6:15
|
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