Past Finishes Determine Kentucky Derby Odds at SBG Global

Kentucky Derby history shows that the last horse to win the Derby finishing 5th or worse was Iron Liege, who finished fifth in the 1957 Derby Trial. As you look at Kentucky Derby for the 2008 race that would mean you would throw out horses like Visionaire, Halo Najib, Cool Coal Man, Pyro, and Big Truck. Pyro is likely to be the third choice on the Kentucky Derby odds board as his trainer says the poor finish was because he didn’t like the Polytrack in the Blue Grass. History has shown that the Blue Grass has produced 23 Kentucky Derby odds winners but this year’s Blue Grass top finishers, Monba and Cowboy Cal look weak. Last year’s Kentucky Derby wagering winner, Street Sense, finished second in the Blue Grass.

Other horses looking to buck the trend of poor last race finishes and win in Kentucky Derby wagering are Denis of Cork who was fifth in the Illinois Derby and Anak Nakal who was fifth in the Wood Memorial. What does this last race trend tell us when looking at Kentucky Derby odds? There are two schools of thought. First, the Polytrack could be a surface that many of this year’s Kentucky Derby odds contenders just didn’t like or second, this year’s Kentucky Derby wagering field could be very weak. You can definitely make an argument either way although there is more to the field being weak than just Polytrack. Only 7 of the 20 horses in the Kentucky Derby field have ever achieved a Beyer speed rating of 100 or more. History tells us that horses that don’t run at least one triple digit Beyer don’t win the Derby. That eliminates 13 of the 20 horses in the field. If you also throw in the conventional wisdom that a horse can’t win with a Dosage Index of higher than 4.00 then three of those seven horses are thrown out in Kentucky Derby odds. That leaves you with only three horses. They are Kentucky Derby favorite Big Brown, Pyro and Z Fortune. That could tell us that the overall Kentucky Derby field in terms of depth is very weak.