Bluegrass Derby: The Road Ends Here

LOUISVILLE –

            The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament has been won eight times by Kentucky and another three by Louisville.  The Road to the Final Four’s similarity to the Road to the Bluegrass Derby is profound.

            The first four months of a college basketball season eliminate around 80% of the 347 Division I teams from contention for the national championship.  The remaining 68 are thrown into the hottest of crucibles – a three-week knock-out tournament in which one misstep can mean the end of the road.  Even for the best teams, no more than two of six games can be considered cake walks.  Teams are just one bad performance (or an injury) away from falling by the way side.

            The Road to the Bluegrass Derby is no different, although when a horse enters the starting gate in an attempt to survive and advance, he faces 13 foes instead of just one.  His (or her) charge is not to best 346 other teams but a foal crop of over 25,000.  It is a daunting task.  Only twenty charmed three year-olds per crop make the starting gate of the Bluegrass Derby.  For many of them, successfully navigating this treacherous road will be their greatest-ever achievement.

            At a cursory glance, the idea that the Road to the Bluegrass Derby contains a “win or go home” knock-out component seems a bit daft.  After all, a horse can endure all sorts of losses en route to the Bluegrass Derby – top contender Double Dissolution was one-for-six as a juvenile! – while the Road to the Final Four is unforgiving.  But the bracketesque nature of the Sim is very real. 

            Look at the field for this year’s Bluegrass Derby.  Almost all of them got into the field by finishing first or second in one of the seven “Derby Lock” prep races – the Grade I All Saints Derby, Sand Castle Derby, Corkscrew S., Wooden Indian, Florida Derby, California Derby, or the Arkansas Juvenile.  In many ways, these races acted as single-elimination contests for Derby hopefuls.  A horse didn’t necessarily have to win to move on – second place is usually good enough – but a poor performance in a Derby Lock race often marked the end of the line.  The scheduling of the Derby Lock races usually meant that only one shot was offered; of the hopefuls for this field, only Tap to Bluff and Papa’s Ghost Ted appeared in more than one Derby Lock race.

            There are routes to the Derby distinct from an exacta in the Derby Lock races.  Think of them as “at-large” berths.  Juvenile champ Deadmoney Cadet has been locked into this field since the Breeders’ Bowl, his recent form reversal notwithstanding.  Lion’s Slew is going to get into the field on the back of a Grade I win in Vermont in February and some juvenile sprint wins in spite of an abject performance in the All Saints Derby.  Blank Space (California Derby) and Lightning Strife (Corkscrew) have parlayed third place finishes in Derby Lock races plus previous graded stakes glory into Derby tickets.  Cal-bred Cinderella Papa’s Ghost Ted ran third in Dubai but seventh in the Corkscrew and is on the bubble.  Gold Sensation and Mount Midoriyama ran one-two in a Grade I race on Sunday and are entered back in six days!

            By and large, however, seven races run over the course of just four weeks hold the entries to the Bluegrass Derby; the Derby “Locks” are actually the Derby “Keys.”  You need one to unlock a stall in the Stakes Barn in Louisville.  Just 98 horses may enter those prep races, and the fields are always over-subscribed.  It is when one looks at those exclusive races, then, and point system used to determine who gets into that “bracket” that one realizes the true nature of the Bluegrass Derby’s long and cruel knockout format. 

            Those points are derived from performance in earlier graded stakes races such as the G2 Fountain of Ute, the G3 Dubai 2000 Guineas, the G3 Gary Asher, the Alou Brothers’ races, and so on.  Those races are themselves generally over-subscribed, and rely on previous (over-subscribed) stakes races which rely on allowance results for their entries, and so on and so on.  There are exceptions, of course, but the need to accumulate entry points is profound.  It’s no wonder trainers start pushing two year-olds into stakes races as early as a year before the Bluegrass Derby or three year-olds into Grade I “last chance” qualifiers six days before the big event.  There’s not One Shining Moment to waste.