Road to the Derby: Arkansas Derby (Division 1) analysis
Road to the Derby: Arkansas Derby (Division 1) analysis
Jay PrivmanMay 04, 2020
Road to the Derby: Arkansas Derby (Division 1) analysis
Bob Baffert had everything but the roses Saturday. The five-time Kentucky Derby-winning trainer won the biggest 3-year-old races of the day on the first Saturday in May, and celebrated, as he would have in Louisville, with a steak dinner from his favorite restaurant.
Saturday was supposed to be the day Authentic and Honor A. P. took their places in the starting gate at Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby. Instead, the highly-promising 3-year-old colts worked at Santa Anita over the weekend in preparation for the rescheduled Santa Anita Derby on June 6.
An unprecedented meet at Oaklawn Park ended in unprecedented fashion when Nadal won the second division of the $500,000 Arkansas Derby to give trainer Bob Baffert a sweep of the Grade 1 races. Charlatan won the first division, also worth $500,000 on Saturday.
Charlatan put in a Division 1 performance in the first division of the Grade 1, $500,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park on Saturday when he set a quick pace and came home strongly for a six-length win over Basin.
In a world free from the coronavirus, Tiz the Law would have spent Saturday morning at Churchill Downs going through the usual preparations prior to parading postward as the likely favorite in the Kentucky Derby. Instead, Florida Derby winner Tiz the Law spent Saturday morning at the Palm Meadows training center in Florida where he breezed an easy five furlongs in 1:01.45 under exercise rider Heather Smullen, continuing to bide his time awaiting whatever as yet undetermined race will be his next.
Charlatan is making his stakes debut in the first division of the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park on Saturday, but his brilliant maiden and allowance wins at Santa Anita coupled with the first division looking as though it came up far softer than the second division, should make him a strong favorite.
Splitting a race into two divisions is first done by blindly dividing horses with common ownership, then blindly dividing horses with the same trainer, then blindly splitting the rest. It’s like a series of coin flips, only with entry slips. For the Arkansas Derby on Saturday, those coin flips resulted a second division that appears on paper to have come up far stronger than the first division.
The latest weather forecast for the first Saturday in May in Louisville calls for highs in the upper 70s and abundant sunshine. In any other year, such a prediction would send giddy ripples throughout the city of Louisville, reverberating especially strongly in the management suites beneath the two green-and-white spires at 700 Central Avenue, the address of Churchill Downs. But this is not any other year.
From Sir Barton in 1919 to Justify in 2018, just 13 horses have managed to sweep the American Triple Crown – the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes.