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Kentucky Derby prep season is about to get underway in earnest, with the first Derby preps that offer 100 points to the winner set for Saturday: the Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds and the Jeff Ruby Steaks at Turfway Park. These two races will be the first of eight such races in the next few weeks that will provide 100 Kentucky Derby points to the winner, and 50 points to the runner-up. Given the points at stake, horses that finish in the top two positions in these races are all but guaranteed a spot in Louisville on the first Saturday in May.
Examining the role that trainers play in getting a horse to the Kentucky Derby, I’ve taken a look at the trainers of horses listed in the 5th and most recent round of the Kentucky Derby future wagering (conducted by Churchill Downs) to see which trainers have the best chance in Louisville this year.
In order to begin this exploration, it might be useful to ask the question: Is it “Trainer Racing” or “Horse Racing”? In the case of the Kentucky Derby, it may be a little of both.
What does it take for a trainer to prepare a horse to run in a field of 20, going a longer distance (a mile and a quarter) than they’ve ever gone before? In the same way that a baseball pitcher has a routine to follow between starts, a trainer lays out a routine between races for a horse. From day to day, a horse might be scheduled for walking the shed row (usually for a day or two after a race), then light gallops, then perhaps a timed workout a week before their next race. These routines can vary slightly from one horse to another, which is why trainers have to know each horse as an individual. Some horses thrive from a lighter workload between races, and some do their best with a heavier workload.
To put the role of the trainer in perspective, I looked at recent winners of America’s most important horse race, and who trained them. In the past three years, the winning trainers have been Eric Reed, Gustavo Delgado, and Ken McPeek, all of whom were winning the Kentucky Derby for the first time in their careers. McPeek is a Louisville native, and he won the Derby last year in his 10th try at the race. Reed and Delgado, both accomplished trainers, have more regional than national reputations. When Reed trained Rich Strike to a 2022 Kentucky Derby win, the horse was his first graded stakes winner since 2009.When the Florida-based Delgado won in 2023 with Mage, it was just his 6th graded stakes winner in his career.
The last three runnings of the Kentucky Derby also have one common factor—the absence of Bob Baffert-trained horses. Baffert was suspended from the Derby for those three years by Churchill Downs for a medication violation with apparent 2021 winner Medina Spirit, which resulted in his disqualification in February of the following year.
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The absence of Baffert in the last 3 years takes nothing away from the wins of Rich Strike, Mage, and Mystik Dan.On the odds board, however, no horse in those 3 years was lower odds than 3-1, so it can be argued that those races were viewed by the public to be somewhat wide-open.
The years before the absence of Baffert can be viewed in a different light. The trainers of the winning horses between 2015 and 2021 have a combined 12 Kentucky Derby wins between them. Baffert is tied for most all-time wins in the Kentucky Derby with 6.From 34 starters, he has won the hardest race to win in America 17.6% of the time and his starters have finished in the top-3 35.2% of the time.
Here are the 39 horses listed in the 5th and most recent round of the Derby future wager and their trainers:
BAEZA – John Shirreffs
BARNES – Bob Baffert
BUILT – Wayne Catalano
BURNHAM SQUARE – Ian Wilkes
CALDERA – D. Wayne Lukas
CALIFORNIA BURRITO – Tom Drury, Jr.
CAPTAIN COOK – Rick Dutrow
CHANCER McPATRICK – Chad Brown
CHUNK OF GOLD – Ethan West
CITIZEN BULL – Bob Baffert
CLEVER AGAIN – Steve Asmussen
COAL BATTLE – Lonnie Briley
CORNUCOPIAN – Bob Baffert
DISRUPTOR – Todd Pletcher
EAST AVENUE – Brendan Walsh
FLOOD ZONE – Brad Cox
GARAMOND – Chad Brown
GETAWAY CAR – Bob Baffert
GOSGER – Brendan Walsh
GRANDE – Todd Pletcher
HILL ROAD – Chad Brown
JOHN HANCOCK – Brad Cox
JOURNALISM – Michael McCarthy
LUXOR CAFÉ – Noriyuki Hori
MADAKET ROAD – Bob Baffert
NEOEQUOS – Saffie Joseph, Jr.
OWEN ALMIGHTY – Brian Lynch
POSTER – Eoin Harty
PRAETOR – Chad Brown
RAPTURE – Brad Cox
RIVER THAMES – Todd Pletcher
RODRIGUEZ – Bob Baffert
SAND DEVIL – Linda Rice
SANDMAN – Mark Casse
SOVERIGNTY – Bill Mott
SPEED KING – Ron Moquett
TAPPAN STREET – Brad Cox
TIZTASTIC – Steve Asmussen
YINZER – Steve Asmussen
It is logical to assume trainers who have previously won the race should be seriously considered whenever they have horses on the Derby trail. Looking for other key factors for trainers, I took the list of trainers on the most recent future wager and found a correlation with those who previously won the Eclipse Award for the top trainer in the U. S. and those who have been voted into racing’s Hall of Fame:
You’ll see that the five trainers with the most horses in the pool all have multiple Eclipse Awards for top trainer, and three of them have been voted into the Hall of Fame. What does all this mean? Is it guaranteed that trainers such as Bob Baffert, Todd Pletcher, or Brad Cox have the Derby winner in their barn?Of course not. But in a play on the name of one of the Cox’s horses, it seems like they might be “flooding the zone.”
Those trainers alone have 13 of the 39 horses (an even third) listed in this most recent future pool. When you factor in trainers who have never won the race but are dominant in American racing, you come up with names like 5-time Eclipse Award winner Chad Brown (four horses listed in the future pool) and Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen (no wins from 26 Kentucky Derby starters, but he has been second three times). Asmussen has three listed in the future pool. Also, if you are looking at trainers who have won the Kentucky Derby, don’t forget about 89-year-old D. Wayne Lukas. He has won the race 4 times, and this past Saturday he captured the 50-points-to-the-winner Virginia Derby with American Promise, a son of Triple Crown winner Justify who is not even listed among the 39 horses on the future wager.
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Once again, there is no guarantee that trainers from within this elite group will capture the big prize. It is entirely conceivable that a trainer like 72-year-old Lonnie Briley could capture the Derby with the impressive Rebel Stakes winner Coal Battle. Also, Ian Wilkes should not be discounted with Holy Bull Stakes winner Burnham Square. I could name others, but the bottom line is that any of the 20 who will enter the gate has a shot to win.
But this year, I think we are more likely to have a trainer who has won the Derby before capturing the race. There is a reason why Coal Battle was bought at auction for $70,000 and other possibles in the field were bought for as much as $3.2 million. High-end trainers get expensive and well-bred horses in their barns, and these are the horses whose breeding comes to the surface over a mile and a quarter at Churchill Downs. The eight 100-points-to-the-winner races to be run in the next few weeks will play a major role in shaping the 20-horse field for May 3rd, but the future wager pool tells us that Derby-winning trainers are likely to make up a decent portion of the field.
We are a long way from predicting the winner of the 151st Kentucky Derby, but the picture will become much clearer in the next few weeks. My crystal ball says that it’s likely the winner will be trained by someone who has won the race before.