Horse racing(credit:
Paola Camera)
Kentucky Derby Winner Mine That Bird heading to Preakness.
Just about everyone including his connections were shocked by Mine That Bird’s Kentucky Derby win, the second longest price in the history of the Run for the Roses.
If recent Preakness Stakes history is any indication, Mine That Bird has a good shot of coming out of Baltimore on Saturday a winner and heading to New York for a date with destiny.
While the Kentucky Derby can give us some crazy results, two horses this decade paid over $100 along with several superfecta payoffs that even had Powerball players taking notice, the Preakness Stakes tends to be more formful.
In addition, over the past eleven years, seven Kentucky Derby winners have come to Pimlico Race Course and taken down the second leg of the Triple Crown.
Perhaps it would have been eight if Barbaro had not suffered an injury in the early stages of the Preakness in 2006.
That led to Bernardini paying $27.80 to win, the biggest price we have seen at the Preakness in over two decades.
While Giacomo and Mine That Bird lit up the toteboard in the Kentucky Derby, the biggest price in the history of the Preakness Stakes was courtesy of Master Derby, who paid $48.80 in 1975.
The Preakness Stakes tends to be an easier race to handicap for a number of reasons.
Three year olds tend to be lightly raced, with just two or three races as three year olds leading up to the Kentucky Derby.
The three year olds are asked to do something they likely will never do again, and that is to get 1 ¼ miles.
The Preakness is a shorter distance (1 3/16 miles) and the Derby tends to weed out about a dozen runners that just are not good enough to compete at the level.
Only the runners exiting the Derby with a good effort or a good excuse tend to come back and run in the Preakness.
Then there are usually a few runners that were not good enough or not ready to run in the Derby, who come into the Preakness fresh. However, they usually do not have as much talent as the horses that ran in the Derby.
Toss in the fact you have a 10 or 12 horse field as opposed to a 20 horse field we usually see in the Derby, and it makes solving the handicapping equation that much easier.
Over the past 23 years, 16 of the Preakness winners paid less than $10 to win. The shortest price was Big Brown, who paid a paltry $2.40 to win last year.
With so many of the Derby winners coming back and winning on Preakness Day, that would seem to bode well for the chances of Mine That Bird.
However, there are those who think his Derby win may have been a fluke. Jockey Calvin Borel found his way to the rail, which was the best part of the racing surface that day.
Borel got a dream trip, the rail opening up for him, something the jockeys in the Preakness may decide to make a no passing zone at Pimlico.
Mine That Bird will also be facing a couple of oddities. The gelding is going to lose his jockey if Rachel Alexandra draws into the field, as expected.
Borel rode the filly to a 20 length win in the Kentucky Oaks (G1), proclaiming the filly the best betting horse he has ever ridden.
That is saying a lot. The jockey also won the Kentucky Derby aboard Street Sense in 2007.
It is unheard of for a Derby winning jockey to take off his mount in the Preakness. The last time it occurred was 1945, when Hoop Jr. won the Derby with Eddie Arcaro aboard. Jockey Albert Snider rode Hoop Jr. to a second place finish in the Preakness. Arcaro did not have a mount that year in the Preakness.
It will put an extraordinary amount of pressure not only on Borel, but the new rider of Mine That Bird.
In addition, Mine That Bird may get a stiff challenge from the filly Rachel Alexandra. While it is unusual for fillies to take on the boys in the Preakness, four have won the race.
The last filly to win the Preakness was Nellie Morse in 1924. The last filly to race in the Preakness was Excellent Meeting, who did not finish the race in 1999.
It all adds up to a very intriguing running this year.
However, recent history suggests this “Bird” just may take flight again in Baltimore.
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