Weekend Winners Club

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Friday May 4 2018. Today we look at how the major prep winners and runners up fared in the Kentucky Derby from 1997-2017. This is best illustrated by another busy graphic.
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Major Prep race winners for Kentucky Derby, 1997-Present

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You can see the horses highlighted in the darker blue who won the Kentucky Derby afterwards, but really the column on the right tells it all:
13 of the past 21 KYD winners won their final prep
19 of 21 finished 1st or 2nd in their final prep race
– exceptions Giacomo and Mine That Bird both of which finished 4th
19 of 21 winners were in a Major Final Prep (those listed)
– exceptions Mine That Bird in Sunland and Animal Kingdom in Spiral.
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So there are exceptions to every rule, but would you rather be right 2 of 21 times or 19 of 21 times? I prefer the latter. And the only non-major prep winner you have to worry about is My Boy Jack.
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So basically the condensed list of potential champions is on the first 2 lines. It’s still 12 horses though so I’d like to narrow it down. Using the 13 of 21 bet, over a 62% chance the Roses winner will have won his final race.
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The Louisiana Derby is still questionable in relevance, since only 2 champions went on to win the Roses, Black Gold in 1924 and Grindstone in 1996, the year before this chart begins. But that can always change.
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For the Kentucky Derby champion, I’m narrowing it down to the 5 major champs, all excellent colts, and going 2 deep in only 2 of them to get Bolt D’Oro, runner up to the Derby favorite Justify, and Solomini.
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Although Solomini finished 3rd, a half length behind Quip, the latter is not running for the roses, so I can move up Solomini into his slot and feel Justified about it. Plus I’ve had him ranked top 5 all year.
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The others are qualified on paper but it just doesn’t look like on the track that they have the appropriate speed to keep up with the winners of most of those races. Besides, look at the list of #2’s the past few years. Aside from last year, you probably don’t remember any of them.
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So there it is, using just Major prep winners and runners up, we narrowed the list of contenders down to 5-7 from 20. In the earlier article on Kentucky Derby Sires and Sirelines 2018, we narrowed down the field based on their sire pedigree.
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In the next article we’ll take a look at jockeys and trainers. Then tomorrow we’ll put it all together for you and give you the real short list.

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2018 Kentucky Derby Championship Point Standings | Kentucky Derby 2018 Championship Series Races | Doug’s Derby Dozen
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Get the full 2018 Kentucky Derby Grid Here with over 80 different factors including pedigree, performance, and historical criteria!

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