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Here is some Kentucky Derby Day information for those who want to help narrow down the contenders and pretenders. It may help you have a little fun and a possible rooting interest in the Churchill Downs racing marathon on this first Saturday in May. Whether you are in an armchair at home, at a Derby Party, or in a betting cave, it is the one race day each year that gets national and international attention.
Stakes races are as difficult to assess as any other sporting event in which somewhat equally qualified contenders match up. So the information entered here is for entertainment value, and past performance (bad?) is no guarantee of future results (worse?). My own rough list of possible contenders will be at the end. A work in progress. The Derby listing is Race 12.
For serious handicapping information, I recommend my friend Derek Simon, a man who puts his money where his many statistical studies point him. So number-crunchers out there may find his takes interesting. And, each year, he publishes a guide full of database statistics and other interesting items.
Here’s Derek Simon’s case against the popular Fierceness.
Here is his statistical look at the mystifying world of pedigree. Can anyone really answer the age-old question, if Grandpa and Dad could run, can I?
And here is an amazing list of long shots Mr. AI produced, with a little help from the questioner.
On some very cold Winter days in another lifetime, I used to sit in the outside boxes at Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens, parallel to the finish line. The goal was to try and keep warm from the wind howling off the JFK runways, Jamaica Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes, in the next box was a guy dressed in jeans along with his friend a snappily dressed gent, Bruno. The sharply dressed gentleman was a maitre d‘ at a restaurant and was dressed to head off to work later. The guy in jeans was Mike Repole, the owner of today’s contender Fierceness. Repole even named one of his horses Dontbetwithbruno after his friend. So a word to the wise is sufficient. Don’t bet with me, either.
Here are some fun contenders that might help you narrow the fields a little. These are free, and yes, you get what you pay for. This is being posted before scratches, so take note.
Pass means skip or no opinion, probably because of too little data that made sense to me. * Means an unraced or foreign horse starting here for the first time. I’ve listed a question mark over them. Chaos means good luck; anything can happen! It is a joker in the pack, usually because there are so many similar contenders.
