Time to look beneath the surface
Tuneups on synthetic strips complicate issue, but there's always ODage
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Was it Dean Wormer or Dean Andrew Beyer who said: ''Fat, drunk and having prime contenders run their final preps for the Kentucky Derby on plastic is no way to pick winners''?
That's the new Rose reality as KD 134 beckons. When George Carlin noted that the IQ of America drops ''two to three points every year,'' he must have had the hierarchy of thoroughbred racing in mind and its rash dash to embrace synthetic surfaces as a Band-Aid for all that ails the health and on-track safety of its horses. Nine of the 20 scheduled starters in Saturday's main event at Churchill Downs had their final tuneup over a synthetic strip. That truly confounds the issue.
Last year, the resolute Street Sense overcame a subpar final prep in the Blue Grass on the Kentucky Fried Putty of Keeneland to annex KD 133. The fact the Carl Nafzger trainee got a strawberry-letter dream trip along the rail under Calvin Borel -- passing 18 flustered foes en route to the garland -- also can't be forgotten.
Most chillingly to coherent Derby selectors -- and the racing desk of The Bright One -- Street Sense became only the second Derby winner from the last 13 not to be an ODage qualifier; Giacomo, at 50-1 in 2005, was the first.
ODage, as the long of race reading will recall, is the KD dicer that selects possible winners from winnowed poseurs based on three criteria. ODage qualifiers must have done the following:
1) Run first or second in their final Derby prep.
2) Recorded a Beyer Speed Figure of 100 or higher in that final prep.
3) Not regressed by more than two Beyer points from their next-to-last prep to their final prep.
Street Sense fell outside the lucky-charmed circle. He got the worst of a four-horse photo in the Blue Grass, a plastic non-classic that included Euro-bean crawl splits of :26.12, :51.46 and 1:16.65. Second-day draft picks at Weight Watchers move faster than that. His Blue Grass Beyer was off the ODage throatlatch at 94.
Still, there is nothing to do but to keep on peeping on, as cooler checkers at the Churchill Downs gates will insist Saturday. And there are four ODage qualifiers this weekend, including the much-vaunted Big Brown. More on them in a minute. First, a lucid thought about whether to bet Big Brown:
The big fella will try to win the Derby from Post 20. That has been done once in 133 years -- less often than aliens rallying in Roswell, N.M. He will go up as a 3-1 favorite. His natural -- purely natural -- odds are 19-1 (20 starters minus one). At natural odds, a $2 win bet would pay approximately $40. If Big Brown wins at 3-1 or thereabouts, he will return $8 or so.
Quick figgers: $40 minus $8 is $32. That remainder -- $32 -- as a percentage of $40 is 80 percent.
Any individual who bets Big Brown at 3-1 will be giving away an extra premium of 80 percent to wager that the horse will accomplish something only one other horse -- the memorable Clyde Van Dusen -- has done in 133 years. That's not entertainment.
The four 2008 ODage qualifiers are Big Brown, Z Fortune, Recapturetheglory and Gayego. Recapturetheglory (Post 18) -- a speedball -- and Gayego (Post 19) will start on the extreme outside adjacent to Big Brown. No Derby champ since Gato Del Sol (Post 18 in 1982) has started outside Post 16.
The remaining 16 starters break down into three handy categories:
No shot: Anak Nakal, Court Vision, Z Humor, Adriano.
Challenged: Denis of Cork, Eight Belles, Monba, Smooth Air, Tale of Ekati.
Potentially ascending Plastiques: Big Truck, Bob Black Jack, Colonel John, Cool Coal Man, Cowboy Cal, Pyro, Visionaire.
And the 2008 Kentucky Derby superfecta is:
Fourth: Gayego (Post 19, 15-1).
Third: Pyro (Post 9, 6-1).
Second: Colonel John (Post 10, 4-1).
First: Z Fortune (Post 6, 15-1).
