There have been a few horses that have dropped out and by derby day there may be more. In light of that I'm doing a bit of revising but my top choices are staying the same.
Before I get to my list there are some comments I'd like to make. The first is that with these 3 yr olds about to enter uncharted territory when going the 1 1/4 in the derby, what they have done til now is no guarantee as to how they will handle the derby distance. Over the years the favorites have failed time and again and mostly because they couldn't handle the distance.
I remember reading that Baffert and Lukas said they paid no attention to pedigree and only looked at the athlete but changed their mind in later years after seeing so many stars meet their doom in the derby.
Another point is that no matter how well a horse is bred, nor how much latent talent it may have, if not handled properly it may just be mediocre.
One more little item concerning this years races: And that's been the change in training methods. In the case of Pletcher, he has usually dominated the prep races but when he got them to the derby, (over 20 of them) they flopped. I'm inclined to think that he felt that they were past their peak came derby time and decided to race them less, or to baby them, hoping they would peak at the right time. It seems like others are also following this trend. Personally, and I'm not alone on this, I think most of the horses going in the derby haven't raced enough to develop any toughness. They run one good race and need a month or more to recuperate. I will say that Zito usually has his horses primed at the right time and he puts a lot of bottom in his horses.
Now to my pedigree list:
1 -- MASTER OF HOUNDS...In my opinion this is the best bred colt in the race...I would pick him as the winner but for a couple questions...the word is that he is coming so I'll assume he is...how will he take to dirt? if he gets here and has a good work at CD that may help answer the question...who will ride him?..he had a terrible trip in the breeders cup and I blame it on the jock...the foreign jocks have a tendency to lay too far back in general...NOW the news...I read that Calvin Borel's agent is interested in getting the ride on this one...IF MOH gets a good work and Calvin gets the mount we could very well see Calvin win yet another derby...MOH has had one race this year and just got nosed at 1 3/16 ...
2 -- ARCHARCHARCH....his pedigree is almost a mirror image of BLAME'S...BLAME never really hit his stride until he was stretched out to 1 1/8 and was never worse than 2nd after that and both these loses were when a horse got loose on the lead and he couldn't catch it...so he won 8 of his last 10 and beat ZENYATTA....AAA is really way ahead of where BLAME was at this point...he's had 4 races already this year and looks to be getting better all the time...likes to come a little off the pace and has tactical speed to get position....This is the one to beat for my money!
#1 and 2 show me way more than the others as far as breeding.
3 -- UNCLE MO...has a nice pedigree but the stamina may be a little diluted by his sire line...he does have the speed to run with just about anyone and if he will rate just off the leaders he could get the jump on everyone..of course there are the lingering questions about his health but I'm still inclined to think he was short on condition in the Wood.
The rest with good pedigrees are; Stay Thirsty, Santiva, Anthony's Cross,Watch Me Go,Brilliant Speed, Soldat, Midnight Interlude, Dialed In, Animal Kingdom.
That's my derby dozen...I think one of the top 3 will win the race and any of the others can get a piece...might be some huge exotics.
UPDATE---Calvin has taken Twice The Appeal as his derby horse. I guess he did so because the connections of Master Of Hounds were not ready to commit yet.
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