Weekend Winners Club

This chart is very telling. It shows the winners and runners up of every G1 Ky Derby prep race from 1997-present. Why starting with 97? Because that’s when we started it.

Of note: All but 2 of the Ky Derby winners during the 15 year span from 1997-2011 finished 1st or 2nd in their final prep (those 2 were 4th). And, only 3 of them had a final prep outside of the Big 5 G1’s (Fla, SA, Wood, BG, Ark).

It also shows that not only has the Illinois Derby become irrelevant, hence its demotion to a G3, but also the Wood has lost much relevance since the Funny Cide/ Empire Maker fiasco of 2003.

The Santa Anita is starting to border irrelevance as well as the CA circuit continues to draw fewer horses due to horseshit regulation.

See the grid of winners and runners up right here

So in conclusion, despite a couple recent weird occurrences in the last few years with the Spiral and Sunland, there is still over a 90% probability that the winner of this year’s Derby will be from the top 2 in one of the Big 5, so that narrows down half the field.

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