Road to the Kentucky Derby - Update

Just a reminder that The Road to the Kentucky Derby will this weekend begin its (for all intents and purposes) Win-And-You're-In-And-Place-And-You-May-Be-In-Too series of prep races.  These are the events that form the second leg of The Kentucky Derby Championship Series, with point scales of 100-40-20-10; that is, the winner of each race will receive one hundred points; Place is worth forty points; Show is worth twenty points; and finishing fourth is worth ten points.  The leader board can be viewed here; as you can see, one hundred points will put any horse right at the top of the standings, while currently only seven horses have more than forty points.

There are seven races in this series; three of them this Saturday: The UAE Derby; The Florida Derby; and The Louisiana Derby.  Next Saturday, April 6, will see two more, with the running of The Wood Memorial in New York and The Santa Anita Derby in California.  The final two races in this series, The Arkansas Derby and The Blue Grass Stakes, will go Saturday, April 13.

By the way, this seems as good a time as any to confess that I did put down some money on a Kentucky Derby Future Wager.  I had never done this before, because, quite frankly, I think Future Wagers on the Derby are horrible investments.  Odds are good that your horse will not make it to the Derby; either because they will be exposed in the preps as not being talented enough to compete against the best three year olds; or because they will be the victim of injury or other happenstance, as was the case with Violence this year, or so many other promising young horses in years past.  And even if you should be fortunate enough to see your future book selection make it to post for the Kentucky Derby, there's no guarantee that the odds you took in your future book wager will be better than what you will get on the first Saturday in May.

Yet, despite all the logic against it, I just couldn't resist.  I looked at the DRF Past Performances, and I saw that the horse with the best Tomlinson Rating for the ten furlong distance was on the board at approximately 30-1 odds.  I can resist a lot of things, but not 30-1 odds on a horse I think has a legitimate chance to win.  And so, I put my money down on the Bob Baffert-trained Code West, Place horse in last month's Risen Star Stakes.

Since Code West will be running in this Saturday's Louisiana Derby, I should know before Easter Morning if my wager was foolish, or really foolish.  Code West is second choice on the Morning Line at 9-2 (Revolutionary is the Morning Line Favorite at 3-1) for the La Derby.  Should Code West win comfortably Saturday and come out of the race well, he will be seen as a legitimate contender in the Kentucky Derby, and the future wager odds will look like a wise investment.  On the other hand, should Code West run up the track Saturday, then he probably won't even be in the State of Kentucky on the first Saturday in May; and I will have manged to lose money on a race that has not yet been run.

Peace and Love,

Jimbo

EDIT March 31, 2013 - Code West finished sixth in the Louisiana Derby, over seven lengths behind the winner, Revolutionary.

Yeah, that was a really foolish bet.  Oh well; onto the next race. - Jimbo