PREAKNESS (G1) ANALYSIS MADE EASY

Every year, the Preakness (G1) is an evaluation of the Kentucky Derby (G1) winner’s chance of repeating a top-level win with less than two weeks rest at a completely different track.

Justify’s dominating win in the Kentucky Derby (G1) has everyone wondering if he is unstoppable. He broke sharp, contested a blazing pace, and drew off with complete authority. Which leaves the betting public viewing the Preakness (G1) as simply a question of whether or not he can produce a second strong effort in two weeks and if anyone will be able to challenge him. 

These questions are best answered by trying to decide which of the Derby finishers will be able to return and deliver another top effort with just two weeks rest, since 14 days is very little recovery time for today’s modern race horse.

This year, four Derby runners are expected to return in the Preakness: Justify, Good Magic, Bravazo and Lone Sailor. Second place Derby finisher Good Magic was a clean-trip ‘clearly second best’ runner in the Derby. Bravazo and Lone Sailor ate a lot of mud in the back of the field early and passed tired horses late to finish sixth and eighth respectively. And all four are wheeling back following what can only be considered a stressful outing (huge crowd, driving rain, very sloppy surface, 20 horses of traffic), so any one of them would have a legitimate excuse were they to run a sub-par performance this Saturday.

What about pace analysis? From a pace perspective, Justify appears to have an even bigger advantage than he did in the Derby. A hot pace cooked everyone but Justify and Good Magic in the Derby, so another hot pace is not necessarily going to cook those two in the Preakness (G1).

And a hot pace seems unlikely this year. Aside from Justify, the only other entrant with any real early speed is Quip, who is owned in part by China Horse Club (just like Justify). Would the connections of the Derby winner want to see their Triple Crown bid thwarted by one of their own runners? That seems unlikely.

What about the newcomers to the Triple Crown trail? The newcomers as of this writing are the aforementioned Tampa Bay Derby (G2) winner Quip, Federico Tesio winner Diamond King, Pletcher-trained stakes-placed maiden winner Pony Up, Asmussen-trained allowance winner Tenfold, and the D. Wayne Lukas runner Sporting Chance, who was DQ’d from third to fourth in the Bluegrass (G2) at Keeneland and then ran fourth on Derby day in the Pat Day Mile (G3). Of this group, only Tenfold has the profile of a ‘late bloomer’, having raced only three times in his career, winning his maiden debut, an entry level allowance, and a well-beaten fifth in the Arkansas Derby (G1). The others are all seasoned campaigners with stakes efforts at ages two and three, yet none of them are considered in the top-tier of this year’s crop. Their established resumes are already fairly deep with decent but not spectacular running lines, making it unlikely any of them will suddenly take a dramatic step forward on Saturday.

This year it is probably safe to rule out the ‘late bloomer’ theories for this particular group. But let’s look at ‘Derby skippers’ from a historical perspective.

Being a well-rested but second-tier horse is rarely a formula for success in the second leg of the Triple Crown. Going back 32 years to 1986, only Cloud Computing, Rachel Alexandra, Bernardini and Red Bullet skipped the Kentucky Derby (G1) and won the Preakness (G1). I would argue that Rachel’s 20-length Kentucky Oaks (G1) win in stakes record time is equal to any Derby bid, so really only three colts in 32 years have won the Preakness (G1) having not raced at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May.

So that brings us back to the ‘bounce’ theory. All four Derby contestants returning for the Preakness (G1) had taxing enough efforts to expect a bounce, but what does history say about Derby winners bouncing in the Preakness (G1)? Once again going back 32 years to 1986, there have been 12 Derby winners that also won the Preakness and 20 that did not. Grindstone in 1996 was retired and Barbaro in 2006 pulled up in the opening furlong, leaving 18 that ran the race and lost. Of those, five of them arguably ran just as well in the Preakness (G1) as their Derby effort, they just failed to win: (Unbridled in 1990, Go For Gin in 1994, Thunder Gulch in 1995, Street Sense in 2007 and Mine That Bird in 2009). Each put forth a good run, they just got beat by a better horse on Preakness (G1) day.

That leaves 13 of the 30 (43%) Derby winners to race in the Preakness (G1) over the last 30 years putting forth a worse effort in the second leg of the Triple Crown. This is the classic ‘bounce theory’ with excuses ranging from the grueling Derby effort, the short time between races, succumbing to the pressure of the Triple Crown trail, and other plausible reasons. So the data tells us more than 40% of Derby winners bounce.

With that in mind, Justify probably has indeed about a 60% chance of running his Derby race again in the Preakness (G1). Estimate the chances as 40% bounce, 60% no-bounce. Against this year’s lineup, a repeat effort (no bounce) puts him comfortably in the winner’s circle.

If 40% of recent Derby winners have won the Preakness (G1), any odds above 3/2 would be an overlay. However, Justify is not going to leave the Pimlico starting gate at more than 3/5, so like most Derby winners, he will be a heavy overlay.

Looking for value, it makes sense to put some of the lesser-known longshot horses like Tenfold and Sporting Chance in the second and third spots in exactas and trifectas. If Good Magic is clearly the second-best horse in this field, he may have no choice but to make a total-exertion effort early in the race to try and beat Justify. And if that effort takes its toll, the second-best horse in the Preakness may finish out of the money, leading to some decent, if not huge, exotic payoffs.

 

 

Be sure to check out Dean Arnold’s handicapping book, A Bettor Way, on sale now through amazon.com and Xlibris Publishing (www.xlibris.com/ABettorWay.html

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