Preakness 2016: Early Predictions Post-Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby is so played out now, like so yesterday’s news, so we head to the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course.
Nyquist, the Kentucky Derby winner, barely had a bath and a tub of oats before horses started taking aim at him for the Preakness. The more horses that challenge the Derby winner, the less respect they tend to have for him.
A truly spectacular horse scares off horses, not invites them, but looking at the Derby, Nyquist is a spectacular horse (despite my analysis of him leading up to the race) relative to these three-year-olds.
Nyquist will be a deserving favorite and the horse to beat—as he always is—come Preakness 141 as he looks to go 9-of-9.
Let’s nail down some predictions now that we’re less than two weeks out for the run for the Black-eyed Susans.
Awesome Speed Won't Be Awesome or Speedy
1 of 7The Federico Tesio Stakes winner is always the “hometown hero.”
He’s like that four-year senior who gets like five minutes of playing time a year in garbage time. The fans cheer for him. They applaud his grit, his commitment to the game, his sheer love of sport.
But he’s a loser. He makes for good local weekly newspaper* copy, but that’s about it.
So too is Awesome Speed, the winner of this year’s Tesio.
He set the pace at Laurel Park with an opening quarter-mile in 25.60 seconds and a half-mile in 50.93. If you superimposed Danzing Candy’s pace from the Derby over Awesome Speed, Awesome Speed wouldn’t be on the screen…and he’s a “speed” horse.
He’ll represent the little guy in the Preakness field, but it will be a wake-up call for this horse. He’s about to see what real class is all about.
*: What are newspapers?
Cherry Wine Could Outperform Brody's Cause
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Brody’s Cause ran a spirited seventh in the Kentucky Derby. You got the sense that by the eighth pole his jockey figured he didn’t have a chance at a significant check, so he sort of coasted at the end.
He had a perfect trip and couldn’t close into a fast pace. Where does that leave him for the Preakness?
It’ll leave him a little tired, certainly more tired than his stablemate and Preakness probable Cherry Wine.
Cherry Wine was a head bob away from third place in the Blue Grass Stakes on April 9. Had he hit the wire ahead of My Man Sam, Cherry Wine would have been Derby bound, but instead sat out the race with a shot at Baltimore.
"He's just a little bit lighter horse," Romans said in Jonathan Lintner of the Louisville Courier-Journal. "We don't have to do as much with him."
Being of slighter build and lightly raced means he has a better chance at skipping over the dirt. He benefits from not running in the Derby, a race that can break a horse as much as build it.
Derby Horses Wheeling Back Will Run Well
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Here’s a look at the last several Preakness results in order, 1-2-3-4. The bold horses ran in the Derby.
2015: American Pharoah, Tale of Verve, Divining Rod, Dortmund
2014: California Chrome, Ride on Curlin, Social Inclusion, General a Rod
2013: Oxbow, Itsmyluckyday, Mylute, Orb
2012: I’ll Have Another, Bodemesister, Creative Cause, Zetterholm
2011: Shackleford, Animal Kingdom, Astrology, Dialed In
My own little theory? These horses rarely race leading up to the Kentucky Derby. Three times is common, twice is becoming the norm. They run in the Derby so fresh that I think they get a bump in conditioning from the race.
That's likely what happened with American Pharoah last year. That’s why, IMO, he wasn’t as sharp in the Derby: He’d won everything so easy to that point that he needed the Derby as a prep (!) to win the Triple Crown.
All these Derby horses that wheel back do astonishingly well. The field is smaller. The race is shorter in distance, and there’s still $1.5 million on the line.
Why not wheel back with a healthy horse if you ran in Kentucky?
Potential Derby starters aiming for the Preakness are Lani, Exaggerator, Brody’s Cause, Gun Runner, Creator and, of course, Nyquist.
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Bob Baffert's Cupid Is the Wild Card
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Cupid suffered an entrapped epiglottis (that thing that covers your windpipe so you don’t swallow food into your lungs) after a disappointing 10th in the Arkansas Derby. This was a horse who on March 19 won the Grade 3 Rebel Stakes with true grit.
Bob Baffert had to pull the horse from rose contention and instead point him to the Preakness, a race he’s won like a trillion times (six).
Cupid will be the pace if he runs. In the Rebel, he blitzed to an opening quarter in 22 and 4/5th seconds. Key to his win was slowing down the second quarter mile to 24-flat as he ran a half in 46 4/5ths.
In a race with a tighter field, this could allow Nyquist yet again to cruise off the pace, control his own trip and explode when he needs to.
Our own Mike Chiari wrote:
"If Cupid is entered into the Preakness, it is difficult to predict how he will perform due to the uncertainty surrounding his breathing.
Baffert is unlikely to put him in the race unless he is 100 percent, though, and if the Rebel Stakes is any indication of his ability, he could give Nyquist some nervous moments at the very least.
"
Baffert decidedly won’t run Cupid unless he’s 100 percent, but Cupid won his race by flying out, slowing the middle and thwarting late rallies.
Gun Runner Will Repeat His Derby Effort
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As I’ll mention a little bit later about Nyquist, Gun Runner also had just two prep races heading into the Derby.
He ran his race in the Derby and had it entirely his way around Churchill Downs. He even had the lead at the top of the stretch.
No excuses. He just got beat. He was third-best out of 20.
“We tried to win,” trainer Steve "The Dude" Asmussen said after the race. “You know what I mean. We tried to win. A solid pace. Nyquist was the horse to beat. I thought [jockey] Florent (Geroux) tried to win the race.”
A rematch of the Derby 1-2-3 finishers could—and likely will—yield the same result.
That’s $20 on a straight trifecta, or a superfecta wheel with Nyquist-Exaggerator-Gun Runner-ALL.
You can buy me a Pabst when we meet.
Exaggerator Will Finish Second...again
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Circling back to Derby horses, Exaggerator will finish this race second yet again.
Horses with one-run closing kicks in the Derby almost always look more impressive than they actually are.
These closers benefit by driving 65 past 35-miles-per-hour cars on the highway. They’ve saved energy and are using it when others are gassed.
Still, it’s hard for a closer to catch a stalker.
“I didn’t think Exaggerator hit the brakes as much as Kent alluded to,” trainer Keith Desormeaux said after the race in quotes provided by Churchill Downs’ media department. “He burst out of the turn, I thought we had time to catch Nyquist. He had clear running room the entire one-quarter mile stretch. I thought for sure we would catch him. He did kind of level off the last sixteenth of a mile. Maybe he ran out of the training.”
The Derby will give him that added boost heading to the Preakness, but Nyquist benefits from that kick in conditioning too.
Which sets us up for…
Nyquist Will Head to Belmont as a Triple Crown Contender
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NBC reported that Nyquist’s trainer, Doug O’Neill, championed Nyquist not to win the Derby, but to win the Triple Crown.
There are no shortages of WTFs at the huevos it takes to be that confident in a horse. If Nyquist does so, he will be the fourth horse in five years alive for the TC at Belmont.
Nyquist had a uniquely light Derby prep schedule. His 2016 debut was a seven-furlong sprint (where he beat Exaggerator for the third time). Nyquist’s second race back was at nine furlongs in the mud in Florida.
That’s it.
Five weeks later he won the Derby with only two preps and only one route. Exaggerator had three. Gun Runner had two.
Point being Nyquist has very little wear on those tires, and that means he’s far from the bottom of his gas tank. In fact, the Derby’s 10 furlongs may have put 87-premium octane in that tank.
“He's doing great,” Doug O'Neill said in a Paulick Report story, arriving to check on the horse around 5:00 AM. “He had his head out over the webbing, looking bright eyed. He ate it all up last night. Couldn't be doing better. He's just such a special horse.”
Nyquist will be 1-5 at post time in two weeks and should run away with the Preakness with something left for the Belmont Stakes.
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