Quote:
Originally Posted by exactatom
I look at Justify as I did Curlin? Both unraced at 2 year olds and appear to be loaded with talent.
However, Curlin ran in two Derby preps, the Rebel and the Arkansas Derby. Justify will be facing quality competition only once.
However, when the Derby came around Curlin just did not get the job done. He improved from the Derby to the Preakness and took off from there.
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This, to me, is completely wrong, and indeed, is an indicator of what is wrong with these "theories".
If the curse of Apollo were a real handicapping factor, Curlin should not have gotten close. Remember, Street Sense, who won the race, got extremely lucky. Without that dream run up the rail under Calvin Borel, he probably doesn't win the thing.
So Curlin got beat by two horses, one of whom only beat him because of racing luck. Curlin himself beat 16 horses in the race. 16 well seasoned horses. 16 horses with more starts. 16 horses with 2 year old form. 16 horses that the "theory" says he could never beat.
If you want a workable theory, you need to account for who runs well in the Derby, not simply who wins it. If the curse of Apollo really worked as a handicapping angle, it should apply just as much to hitting the board as to winning it.
And if you want to study a handicapping angle, saying "X out of 40 Derby winners" is basically guaranteed to be statistically invalid. You need to include every Derby runner up, every Derby third place finisher, etc., in the study. In fact, you should include last and next to last and third from last finishes-- if the handicapping factor is really dispositive, not only should they be less likely to win, they should also be more likely to finish last.
The reality is that if you start doing this, you will find that the theories don't "hold". For instance, dosage, even in its heyday, was absolutely terrible at predicting who would finish in the money in the Derby. It only "forecast" the Derby winner. Which basically proves that it was a random effect of variance.
Similarly, if a handicapping angle works on the Derby, it should also work on the Preakness, which is basically the exact same race as the Derby, run two weeks later. Yet Curlin won the Preakness! Indeed, he ran the fastest correctly timed Preakness in history.
The bottom line problem with all of these angles is the assumption that the Derby isn't a normal horse race. You don't look at Storm Cat versus Raise a Native sire lines, or 2 year old experience, or number of starts in the 3 year old season when handicapping a $16,000 claiming race on a Friday at Santa Anita. Why do these irrelevant factors suddenly not only become relevant, but controlling, in this ONE race in May at Churchill Downs? There's no reason to do this other than people really want to gamble on the Derby and not pass the race because of its psychological and societal importance, and these "angles" give people an excuse to do it.
