In the mainstream sporting world, we’re talking end of the NBA lockout, NFL playoffs, BCS title game, and the NHL-leading New York Rangers. (OK, maybe not that last one. But if you’re a Rangers’ season ticket holder, as I am, and used to years of mediocrity, you seize any opportunity you can to be proud of, and not embarrassed by, your team.)
But in the racing world, none of that matters. In the racing world, we’re already talking Derby, even though it’s winter (theoretically), and even though the Kentucky Derby is still four months away, and even though at this point we have absolutely no idea who’s going to run in America’s most famous race, much less who’s going to win it.
None of that deters Derby die-hards. Like those Rangers fans that revel in any chance to bask in the success of the team, racing fans look forward to the one day of the year that our sport takes center stage, when people other than our small coterie cares about which horse crosses the wire first.
And so, when the calendar reads January 1, it starts. Actually, it usually starts—“it” being Derby fever—in November, right after the Breeders’ Cup, but it really, really starts on January 1, and that’s because all Thoroughbred race horses, no matter on what date they are actually born, officially turn a year older on January 1. All registered Thoroughbreds born in 2009 celebrated their third birthday a couple of weeks ago, and that means that they’re now eligible for the Kentucky Derby, which, like all Derbies, is restricted to 3-year-old horses.
And literally, on the first day that horses are Derby-eligible, the first Derby is held: this year, the Gulfstream Park Derby at Gulfstream Park, just south of Ft. Lauderdale.
And so, it begins.
Derby prep season.
From now until May 5th, racetracks across the country will stage a series of races restricted to 3-year-olds; the races will be a mile or longer, to help horses get ready to run the 1 ¼ miles distance of the Kentucky Derby, a racing distance that they won’t run until that day.
Many of those races will be graded stakes races: they’re how horses make the starting gate. The Kentucky Derby is limited to 20 starters (more than twice the number of horses in most races in this country), and entry is based on graded stakes earnings. In order to qualify for the race, horses have to be in the top 20 of lifetime graded stakes earners; horses that won graded stakes race at 2 have a jump on those that don’t start running in graded races until they’re 3. They don’t have to win those races; most races pay purse money to horses that finish fifth or better, though the better you finish, the more money you earn.
So far, only one race run this year that could be considered a Derby prep was graded: the Sham, run at Santa Anita last Saturday, was a Grade 3. Its winner, Out of Bounds, banked $60,000.
The next graded stakes race on the Derby trail is the Grade 3 Lecomte at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans on January 21, worth $105,000 to the winner, followed by the Grade 3 Holy Bull at Gulfstream on January 29. A win in the Holy Bull is worth a whopping $240,000, virtually ensuring enough earnings to make it to the Derby.
Trainers with these dates circled on their racing calendars need not worry, though, if their precious, precocious 3-year-olds don’t hit the wire first in their prep races. Six of the last 10 winners of the Derby didn’t win a graded stakes race until the end of March. Two of them, Funny Cide in 2003 and Giacomo in 2005, won their first graded stakes race in the Kentucky Derby itself.
So let the games, or the races, begin. With 18 or so graded stakes preps, and a handful of ungraded races that horses might use as springboards to the bigger races, there will be no shortage of opportunities to check out this year’s contenders and pick out your 2012 Derby horse. As the official Kentucky Derby site will tell you, there are only 114 days left.
Correction: An earlier version of this post inaccurately stated that Secret Circle, who finished second in the Sham, had graded earnings from his victory in the Breeders' Cup last November. The race he won, the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Sprint, is not graded, and thus his earnings ($270,000) do not count towards Kentucky Derby entry.
