As the serious Kentucky Derby preps begin this Saturday with the Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park, you can do this the hard way like me or just wait for the Derby Week pick of DRF national correspondent Jay Privman.Starting with Barbaro 10 years ago, Jay has picked six of the last 10 Derby winners with one second, Pioneerof the Nile. Actually, I’ll give him seven. Mine That Bird did not really win in 2009, did he?I knew I should have changed from Dortmund to American Pharoah last May when Jay was on Pharoah, but I had invested too much time in analyzing everything Dortmund had done to that point. I was not willing to change, but I should have been. I thought I had it all figured out so I stopped listening.The lesson I have learned over the last decade is that opinions best be fluid. I was wide open when I got to Kentucky in 2006, but Barbaro’s final work put me all-in for the best Derby-winning performance I have seen in person.I stood firm two years ago on California Chrome even when I heard he did not look so good on the track Derby Week because Chrome had all the Beyers, I didn’t like any of the other horses anyway. I wanted Art Sherman to win and I wanted a superfecta single to make the gambling less complicated.Bob Baffert, who trained Pharoah and Dortmund, never said it for the record, but you did not have to read between the lines to know he thought Pharoah was the better of his two horses. I gave that very strong consideration. I just thought Pharoah was one race away from his best because he got started so late. Turned out I was right about that, but it didn’t matter. The soon-to-be Triple Crown winner was just that good.So, in between basketball games (and sometimes during basketball games on my laptop) for the next two months, I will watch Nyquist, Mohaymen, Exaggerator, and all the rest, checking out the workout patterns, reading the stories, watching the replays over and over again.As we get started, I have an early lean toward Mohaymen, but am keeping all options open, including going to Kentucky with no opinion, waiting for Privman to release his horse and just stealing his selection as if it were mine all along.Seriously, the fun of a year like this is how wide open it all seems at the moment. Who could have a really strong opinion when none of these horses has come close to the Beyer Speed Figure it will take to win the Derby.That could change quickly if something (hoping for Mohaymen) blows up in the Holy Bull and gets the first triple-digit Beyer by any horse in this generation.Whatever happens on Saturday and then in February, March, and April, I am going to try to keep an open mind as long as possible. My mind, however, can quickly be closed if some horse wants to pair up triple-digit Beyers in his first two preps.I am not big on historical trends, but I think it is significant that only one Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner (Street Sense) has won the Derby. I started in this game in the 1970s when the best 2-year-old was regularly the best 3-year-old. The way horses are trained began to change in the 1980s and the Derby results reflect that change.So, even though Nyquist is an unbeaten Juvenile-winning, 2-year-old champion, I am very skeptical of his chances this May. And there is the small matter of the horse not yet hitting 90 on the Beyer scale.But if Nyquist comes out and keeps finding ways to win races, I may have to re-evaluate. There are horses that run just fast enough to win, but, other than Zenyatta, not many can do that at the top levels of the sport. So, it’s the Holy Bull, the Robert Lewis, and the San Vicente soon, then it’s Fountain of Youth and the Rebel and, finally, the Florida Derby, Wood Memorial, Santa Anita Derby, Blue Grass, and Arkansas Derby.Soon enough, we will arrive in Louisville again and it will be time to reveal all that we have learned. Or just wait on Jay Privman.