Jockey Calvin Borel (Bo-RAIL) has done it again, exploding up the rail in the 135th Kentucky Derby to shock the world by winning the nation’s biggest race at odds of 50/1. The win completes a perfect sweep of the both the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby, and both in amazing style. Mine That Bird was 50/1 on the tote board going to post, and goes down as the second longest priced horse to win the Kentucky Derby in it’s storied history.
50/1!!!!!! Are you kidding me? In the Derby? Wow, guess we just missed “the next Giacomo.” Watching Calvin celebrate afterwards all one can wonder is how one man can dominate one lane at one track so thoroughly as Calvin Borel does at Churchill Downs along the rail? It is absolutely astonishing. Twice now in the last 3 years he’s made the same move and won the Derby.
On Friday we had visions of Secretariat in the ’73 Belmont as Rachel Alexandra throttled the Oaks field by over 20 lengths. On Saturday we were treated to visions of Street Sense in the ’07 Derby, as Calvin Borel did what he always does. He found the rail, made his move, and then continued to to extend throughout the stretch. Mind That Bird opened up a final margin of 6 3/4 lengths and completed the 1 1/4 mile distance of the Derby in 2:02.66.
How on earth did this happen? A son of Birdstone, Mine That Bird had never broken the 90 Beyer Speed Figure level. In fact, he had barely broken the 80′s. Talk about a stunning improvement. Exiting back to back less-than-inspiring performances in ungraded stakes at Sunland Park, for goodness sakes, he was less than an afterthought. I ‘ll be honest. I had him ranked as the third from lowest contender in this field. That’s right - 3rd from last. Never saw that coming in a million years. The only runners I had behind him were Atomic Rain (who finished 16th), and Flying Private (who finished last). Of course, the horse I did have finished 18th (Friesan Fire). Sigh.
Yet Mine That Bird, somehow, was clearly the best. Once you could see him making his move along the rail, all you could think of was “wait, who the heck is that along the rail?” As if we even needed to ask. It could only be one man, and just like he did aboard Street Sense in 2007, he did again in 2009.
In the “race behind the race”, an interesting battle was happening that many racing fans may have missed. Pioneer of the Nile, Musket Man, and Papa Clem battled it out and ultimately rounded out the superfecta, respectively. Chocolate Candy and Summer Bird were another 6 lengths back from the top four.
The final results with beaten lengths was as follows:
- #8 Mine That Bird —
- #16 Pioneer of the Nile – 6 3/4
- #2 Musket Man – 6 3/4
- #7 Papa Clem – 7
- #11 Chocolate Candy – 13
- #17 Summer Bird – 13 1/4
- #9 Join in the Dance – 14 1/2
- #10 Regal Ransom – 15
- #1 West Side Bernie – 15 3/4
- #12 General Quarters – 17 3/4
- #15 Dunkirk – 19 1/4
- #5 Hold Me Back – 20 3/4
- #4 Advice – 21 1/4
- #19 Desert Party – 22
- #3 Mr. Hot Stuff – 22 1/4
- #18 Nowhere to Hide – 35 1/4
- #6 Friesan Fire – 42 3/4
- #20 Flying Private – 44
Obviously the most disappointing of these was post time favorite Friesan Fire, who was beaten by over 40 lengths. Most likely this is because I selected him once I Want Revenge was scratched. My apologies to the Larry Jones camp. Now I just hope he checks out okay without an injury. Finishing 40 lengths back at his talent level is more than worrisome.
All of this makes the Preakness, just 2 weeks away, a more intriguing race.
- How many runners will be scared away from Mine That Bird?
- Was it the sloppy track?
- Was it some other factor that makes him vulnerable two weeks from now (and beyond)?
I’m thinking many will be expecting a significant bounce off of that performance. The Preakness, due to it’s reduced field size of 12, tends to be a better barometer in terms of absolute talent.
Speaking of which…we went into the week thinking we had a fairly good handle on who the best 3-year-olds in the country were. We leave with Rachel Alexandra and Mine That Bird seemingly on a level of their own. Hats off to the connections of each.
Is there any chance we might see them in the Preakness two weeks from now at Pimlico? We can only dream. What a matchup that would be.
Should have known when ‘Hammerin’ HANK selected FF – it was the kiss-of-death. GREAT RACE – MORE POWER TO THE CONNECTIONS OF MINE THAT BIRD AND THAT HORSE’S TRAINER-OWNERS-AND CONNECTIONS. Made me smile at the ‘luck’ of horse-racing!!! WAY TO GO CALVIN BO-RAIL!!! [My wife had the exacta of CALVIN+KENT yesterday in the OAKS and did not hit CALVIN+KENT today as HOLD ME BACK did not finish second - playing jocks sometimes pays off!!!]
You just get beaten down by the continuous scratches and track conditions. I tried to do a breeding analysis on who may benefit from the track conditions. I remembered Empire Maker (Pioneer of the Nile) just beating Smarty Jones outside in the Wood in the slop. Four horses had that pedigree, that being the Unbridled line, the winner was one of them. An exator box would have been a nice payoff. How many times do you have to analyse a race?
BAKIN
Maybe this is why Baseball has rain delays!!! So the Washington Nationals don’t win the World Series! I will admit the horse won by 6 3/4 and looked great after the race. Could be a another Triple Crown tease!
Im stunned Kevin! His highest Beyer is an 81. They said the rail though all day was favoring. He had the rail the entire stretch.
Im happy though about one thing. I no longer have to hear from anyone that Pioneer can’t run on the dirt or slop and is just a California horse. I never doubted he could run on it. He did great. He beat out every horse in here except the winner. He was in the middle of track and just could not keep going. I wonder if he had rail in stretch if it would have been different.
Pioneer looks like a strong horse to consider if he goes to the Belmont.
As for Mine That Bird, I wonder what his odds will be like come Preakness day? From 50/1 to favorite? Guess it depends on who shows up to face him.
This is the kind of race that makes you scratch your head and wonder why we bother putting in the effort to handicap. He looked clearly over matched on paper. An 81 Beyer? Not even a high 80′s to build on?
Seriously, I think I could’ve done better if I had let “Ralph, the amazing wonder llama” make my selections for me.
Actually it was very Giacomo like. Both Mike Smith and Calvin Borel rode picture perfect races. Both had dosage figures over 4.00, and both qualified off graded stakes earnings from the 2yo record. The reverse dosage players were well rewarded…hats off to them!
Friesan Fire was the only entrant with positive off track form but all of his wins were against 113n/c paces so I doubted his ability.
Pioneer Of The Nile ran a duplicate of his SA Dby win which was awful.
Dunkirk didn’t have the foundation (3 races) to deal with the tiring surface and his trainer probably wasn’t going to take risks with such a valuable animal anyway.
It’s had to say that the performance was genuine given the perfect ride and trip but the 105 I got from the race puts him well ahead of Giacomo and AFAICT there is no Afleet Alex in the picture.
“This is the kind of race that makes you scratch your head and wonder why we bother putting in the effort to handicap”
Because it improves your mind. Watching CNN or FOX or propaganda kung-fu cop (don’t tazer me bro) flicks do just the opposite. Besides, the NBA/NHL playoff games don’t come on until after the races are over.
Just as a point of interest, the Kentucky Derby winner was the only horse to have a Dosage Index above the required 4.00. The DRF might as well scrap that feature.
BAKIN
Kevin,
I’m not willing to concede a RACHEL VS. BIRD Preakness would be a dream match up. I had him running last as many others did, so the fluky Derby result would not have played out on a fast track. The way PIONEEROF THE NILE looked into the lane…oh I was counting my future wager winnings. No way MINE THAT BIRD is able to knife through traffic like that as on dirt the tiring group would not have been so spread out and he didn’t give any impression of this at Sunland on a dry surface.
Add in that Dunkirk stumbled at the start and Friesan Fire was mauled, creating a huge gash in his leg and loosened a shoe. Perhaps those two situations don’t happen on a “fast” track.
I’ll expect a full field to challenge the pretender, whose only shot to hit the board is that it rains at Pimlico as well.
KANADIANBAKIN: Empire Maker defeated Funny Cide in the ’03 Wood Memorial, with the gelding turning the tables in the Derby…Smarty Jones won the Arkansas Derby prior to his win in the muddy Derby of ’04.
DON SWANSON…”Pioneer Of The Nile ran a duplicate of his SA Dby win which was awful.” – Really…another point of view was that he didn’t handle the track as well (Papa Clem was well beaten in the Risen Star in the slop but won the Arky Derby on “fast” going), his class allowed him to gut out the place.
“Friesan Fire was the only entrant with positive off track form but all of his wins were against 113n/c paces so I doubted his ability.” – Did you catch that he was stepped on and that was the reason for his poor showing???
“Dunkirk didn’t have the foundation (3 races) to deal with the tiring surface and his trainer probably wasn’t going to take risks with such a valuable animal anyway.” – Did you catch how badly he stumbled out of the gate, usually the kiss of death??? Let’s hope this talented colt isn’t injured badly from it.
The best horse that day was clearly Pionerof the Nile. Nobody gave him respect and he ran huge, through the center of the soup. The best ride was by Calvin Borel, riding the (one hole) which was the only dry firm dirt on the track. Mine That Bird will never win another major stakes again. A pathetic way to end a classy race. Now the connections are saying they will skip the next race. They realize they robbed the Triple Crown of its glory and want to get out of town before someone ask them for a refund. What a complete waste and joke to the entire process.
That jockey is a genius. I love rain exactly because it throws the handicappers into fits and makes things unpredictable.
It’s just ridiculous to call the winnner “pathetic” when he just went out there and ran and won. You lost some money? Don’t take it out on the horses.
Kevin, what I’d like to know is, was this the horse Borel was always going to ride? Or was it the result of a last minute scratch? And what did he see or know about the horse that everyone else missed?
Mine That Bird doesn’t look like a fluke to me. He won four in-a-row as a two year old, maybe he just needed time to catch up maturity wise with the others. He is headed to the Preakness his connections said, and hopefully Poineer Of The Nile also.
I’d still bet on Pioneer to win if the track is dry, but Mine That Bird obviously deserves respect this time. Calvin Borel almost did the “derby ride” in the 2007 Preakness with Street Sense, saving ground all the way then sling-shotting him off the turn into the lead. He would have won except for Curlin (my choice for most brilliant and talented horse in the last 25 years!! (-: ). So Calvin “Bo-rail” knows how to ride the rail to victory (or almost) on tracks other than just Churchill.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I had him (Mine That Bird) in my trifecta as the third horse. But I admit I didn’t think he had any kind of shot, I just liked the beautifuly long odds!! (-:
Great race this weekend. Who would’ve thought a 50-1 shot this year? Also, I know most of us horse lovers use it, so thought I’d let you know that I found some pretty great coupons on Absorbine products: http://www.absorbine.com/offers.html. I can’t wait to try out UltraShield; the stuff is supposed to work wonders! Take care.
“DON SWANSON…”Pioneer Of The Nile ran a duplicate of his SA Dby win which was awful.” – Really…another point of view was that he didn’t handle the track as well”
Yes really. POTN ran the same as the SA Dby, actually a little bit worse. Papa Clem improved off his Louisiana Dby performance. Since I bothered to made figures for the race…the RB Lewis was a good race and perhaps underrated by Beyer but that was 3 races ago and I rated the horse off his 9f performance last out. On dry land I prefer Papa Clem.
Friesan Fire…yes he got the worst of it, but he ran a pretty good race last out in the slop and only a fool would take a stand against that even if he did look suspect moving up to the Gr-1 level off those 113 n/c paces.
Given a fast track I would still prefer Papa Clem over Mine That Bird although the figs for PC don’t quite come up to par for Derby winners so he’s clearly beatable if some horse jumps up (Dunkirk?) hence a small win/place wager would be appropriate given the double digit odds. On dry land Papa Clem comes up no worse than second money by my handicapping.
RICHARD MANDELLA ‘trained’ ‘MINE THAT BIRD’ – what happened there??? THERE’S THE REAL ‘NEWS’ STORY THERE???!!! Even ‘HALL-of-FAME’ trainer’s make mistakes in estimations of talent!!!
“Exiting back to back less-than-inspiring performances in ungraded stakes at Sunland Park, for goodness sakes, he was less than an afterthought.”
I thought his 110.1 / 136.4 from his last race stacked up pretty well against the others. Since MTB qualified from the Grey Stks last October, he didn’t have to finish well in either of his preps or the BC Juv for that matter. I went to the trouble to create fractional time standards for the triple crown races last year. All you had to do was plug them into your spreadsheet or whatever. You could also have used the PDQ pace ratings from Turf Pedia.
Some very interesting points being made here. I’ve learned over the years to fully respect whatever Don says about pace handicapping.
Still not sure I ever would’ve considered Mine That Bird anything more than a longshot chance to finish in 3rd, and even then I probably would’ve cut him from the ticket (just being obvious in my self assessment).
Not sure how I feel about MTB on what should be (provided the weather cooperates) a faster surface in the Preakness. If he sticks to his new found closing style, I’ll probably have to play against as, apart from a little racing luck on the rail from Calvin Borel, it’s a bit harder to close at Pimlico, in my opinion.
You never know though….I wonder if it would turn the world more upside down if Mine That Bird won the Preakness or if he lost? The general consensus seems to be that he has a slim chance in the Preakness. Of course, that’s coming from us same “experts” (note: I do NOT consider myself an expert) who gave him no chance in the Derby, so what do we know?
If he wins – it might be even more shocking, as no longer could the proverbial “they” say it was due to the track surface. Of course, if he loses, than god help him as he’ll take a beating in the press for being a “fluke.”
Like most things in life, the truth is probably somewhere in between. There are definitely lessons we can learn. One of them being not to get lazy and start tossing horses based on Beyer speed figures. It’s not that the entire decision was based on that, but in full honesty, yeah….I saw the 70′s, the 80, and the 81 in the recent races and thought ‘you’re kidding, right?”
Well, looks like the joke was on me/us. They weren’t kidding. They meant business, and nobody bothered to tell the horse that he wasn’t supposed to win.
The million dollar question is, when faced with a similar decision in the future, how will we respond? In retrospect, my heart is aching due to the fact that we’ve had $72 and $100 winners in the last two Triple Crown races (Da’ Tara in the ’08 Belmont and now Mine That Bird in the ’09 Derby), and I’ve not cashed a ticket on either of them.
Wonder how the owners of Kelly Leak feel since they won the Sunland Derby and beat Mind That Bird by 4 3/4 on April 11th! Betcha they got sick on there laps!
Let’s see the NYYanquis of beisbol fame try to ‘buy’ a pennant with expensive millionaire talent AND PLETCHER+his owners and the SHEIKS try and buy the winner of the K-DERBY with their millions+millions – both DOOMED TO FAILURE!!! Ah that’s what good about horses like MINE THAT BIRD winning races as the little gelding did on Saturday. Makes you think there is balance in the world – only in spots for a while.
Hey K, I got to thinking about the crazy lady I ran into last year at Hollywood Park who said the secret to winning big bucks was pick your favorite and exacta (wheel?) him against all, then pick all against da favorite. Now POTN wasn’t my favorite but I also had this “get over the emotions” POTN’s the one feeling. If I’d then followed the crazy lady’s advice I’d be oh so happy. On the other hand, if a bunch of favorites won the exacta I would have lost a bunch following that strategy… as I did anyway… but loved the way it played out after got over I Want Revenge heartbreak.
I think there are ten pointing to the Preakness … but I don’t see KELLY LEAK on the list … I am really surprised that he wouldn’t take another crack at MINE THAT BIRD … woudn’t mind seeing MASSONE enter as well.
By the way, MARYLAND racing is dead … where the heck are the slots when you need them … where are they Kev?
And if you applied my fractional time standards to MTB then looked at the Lone Star Dby you could have slammed the easy winner Mythical Power at even money which is exactly what I did. I decided to pass the big race and still doubled my money for the effort with minimal risk…and that’s what this game is really all about.
“The million dollar question is, when faced with a similar decision in the future, how will we respond? In retrospect, my heart is aching due to the fact that we’ve had $72 and $100 winners in the last two Triple Crown races (Da’ Tara in the ‘08 Belmont and now Mine That Bird in the ‘09 Derby), and I’ve not cashed a ticket on either of them. ”
Neither did I and I’ve been handicapping since 1982 and winning since 1989.
How do you get by Big Brown in the triple crown? BB either wins or flames out and after 2 big wins the flameout seemed highly unlikely. Look at my fractional time standards then look at Da Tara again. You’ll see why Nick Zito pointed him there. A minimum place bet might have been reasonable.
MTB was showing strong form on dirt, was decently bred and was a graded route winner at 2 with a solid 8 race foundation. You take a stand against the poly ponies unless they absolutely stand out class wise like you would on any other surface in any other race. The mud and new rider are major form question marks. Against Friesan Fire you bet win/place and pray or you do like me and skip the race knowing that there will always be another race like the Lone Star Dby where even money 3-star mortal locks like Mythical Power figure to double your outlay.
Hey all you Mine That Bird fans out there! I got this shot of him as he passed me with a furlong to run in the Derby…
http://sports.webshots.com/photo/2317287850099982989Ioqcny
It makes a nice desktop pic if you have a widescreen monitor.
Jerry, that photo is AMAZING!!!!! Seriously, that’s professional quality! Job well done, sir. I stand and applaud you. Are you headed to Baltimore by chance this weekend?
Don – gotta get your Preakness picks….I’m still a total newb trying to apply the pace figs. What do you think of Rachel getting the 13 hole?
Yeah, I’m going with my fiance and my dad. We have general admission tickets with no outdoor access. I doubt I’ll get another pic like that, but I’ll be taking my camera nonetheless. Where are you going to be?
Turfside Terrace – both Friday and Saturday. I’ll probably wear my crimson Alabama hat (with a big, cursive A) to make me easier to spot. last year I had a bright yellow hat from Pimlico, but that sort of got ruined doing yardwork later in the year (for some stupid reason, I wore one of my favorite hats for a particularly sweat inducing round of labor).
I tend to mill around outside , right in front of the toteboard/jumbotron near the finish line. If you can spot the guy pacing around in the Alabama baseball cap, that’ll be me.
I’m usually out there pacing, looking over the form, pacing some more, muttering incoherent statements about Roman military triumphs, and finally a good healthy dose of (what else?), pacing.
You know…just re-read this post, and looked at my last two sentences asking if we might see Rachel vs Mine That Bird.
Of course now we know we will, but think back to two weeks ago when nobody thought that might happen. Wow….totally got what I wished for!
Now I just hope they all run well and come back healthy.
Hopefully you’ll be jumping up and down instead of pacing after the race!
My pick to win the Preakness is #7 Papa Clem. He was very eager in the Derby and was fighting Rafael Bejarano who had him under “steadying restraint” until the far turn. This time the pace will be very fast and I think he’ll rate more comfortably behind the leaders and pass them when they tire at the end. I also like Mine That Bird but I don’t think he will catch Papa. Rachel Alexandra won her last race by 20 lengths, but let’s be honest, it was against a bunch of pussies -lol. My fiance and I were going to bet Justwhistledixie to beat her but she got scratched. I don’t like her odds, the outside post position, or the fact that she runs on the pace. I’ll probably bet Papa Clem to win, and a 13-7 exacta in case the superfilly runs as good as everybody else thinks she will.
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