With 22 winners of the KYD to compare we can start to build a picture of what future KYD winners will look like. I looked at breeding first but there was very little correlation between winners and the attributes or performance of their lineage and with a relatively small sample there was little information that was any use.

In the first column of the stats I gathered, is the winners lead up race and performance, and this was the first somewhat surprising stat which tells us something. Only ten of the twenty-two winners had won their lead up race with nine finishing second or third and three being outside the top three in their race preceding the KYD. Whilst this doesn’t really give us any definitive detail it does tell us that a win in the lead up to the KYD is probably not as important as many think and even an average performance isn’t the kiss of death you would imagine.

The second column is a somewhat expected result with 13 of the 22 winers being geldings including the last ten. This stat is more reflective on our breeding stats than anything else as it does mean that we haven’t had a KYD winners’ blood in any of our recent offspring which is a bit of a tragedy to that part of the game. I guess the question is would any of that last ten won if they hadn’t been gelded? Well, that question is of course impossible to answer but the rules themselves certainly point to gelding being a good option.

From The Rules:

Some horses may show significant speed improvements on the track while others may show no improvement after being gelded. It is quite possible that some horses may never reach their full speed potential without being gelded. However, such a situation would only be found in horses with short lifespans or very slow improving horses that would be incapable of reaching their maximum potential speed within their lifespan without some outside help. Gelding a horse does not increase its maximum potential speed. The genetic makeup of how fast a horse is capable of running cannot be changed. When gelding improves a horses speed it is just helping it to get to its maximum speed more quickly by improving its focus. A lot of horses do not need to be gelded to reach their full speed potential. If they are trained well and kept in good condition, they are capable of reaching their full potential on their own.

So, I guess gelding is the easy option as it has no detrimental effects only positive ones and if the aim is just to win the KYD or the TC it is a good option but if our breeding game is ever going to diversify then perhaps, we need to adjust our attitude to the geld.

The next stat deals with how many runs against wins a horse had prior to its KYD win. Exactly half of the winners had three wins or less and half four wins or more. The least any horse had won leading into the KYD was twice. The most common number of wins was three but the best we can get from this stat is that winning between 2 and 7 times is the only 100% occurrence. The number of times a horse ran was between six and thirteen, but this stat is probably skewed by the fact that they had to accumulate points so they would have to run a good few times to achieve that. Only one unbeaten horse has won the KYD and that was Howl To The Hound.

We now get into the conformation stats which are probably the most important to players when looking at a potential Derby horse.

This is certainly reflective in recent years with the fact that we have full access to conformation details whereas that wasn’t the case in the early days of HRP. So, we could expect more recent conformation to look better than it did in the early days as back then the only real guide was works and racecourse performance.  

The Lumbo and the forehand tend to give a better guidance to ability, so it is no surprise to see a Very Good or ideal Lumbo present in 20 of the 22 winners with Very Good strangely outdoing Ideal by 16 to 4. 13 of the 22 have a light average forehand but strangely none have what is considered to be the best, which is light. In fact, with 7 average forehands and even 2 below average it would seem that a perfect forehand is in fact detrimental or at least less important, which considering it is a sign of ability seems strange. This maybe down to the development side of things with the forehand sighting longevity as part of its traits so perhaps longevity isn’t so important in a three-year-old winning in May.

For me one of the most interesting parts of the conformation is the rear triangle. You would think with the KYD being over ten furlongs just two shy of the furthest a HRP horse can run that Hip To Stifle Longest would be a common trait and hip to stifle shortest would be the least common. In fact, ten of the twenty-two winners have a balanced rear triangle, this is by far the most common, with a short femur coming in next most common with four. Hip to stifle longest only gets three winners whereas hip to stifle shortest gets two. What does this tell us? Well, I think the short femur thing is more to do with longevity than anything else for the same reason the forehand doesn’t seem as important as the lumbo. But the fact that there is only one more winner with a long rating rather than a short one does seem contradictive to the descriptions given. Speed though can be very useful in the KYD and I guess this is where a horse with speed who is able to find a position can be better than a horse who will be strong at the end of the race but facing a lot of traffic. Illium Shortest gets three winners too but with 8 of the 22 KYD’s being run on an off track I am almost surprised it hasn’t won more although only one of the horses with a short illium won on an off track.

One of the stats really does stand out and that is the humerus angle with an amazing 19 of the 22 winners having a High Medium angle making this, probably the most definitive stat in this whole narrative. With a high angle being a sign of ability and pace, it certainly ties in very nicely with our assumption that pace is probably more important than stamina as a whole in the KYD.

With the stifles and humerus being largely around mid-level it ties with that mix of pace and stamina that we have seen is so important and gives us some understanding of what it takes to be a KYD winner. Looking at these confo stats I would say there is a type which fits nicely however with this being horse racing nothing is impossible as was demonstrated in the conformation of horses like Laffin To Mia and Willow Grove.

Finally, soundness is pretty varied and like a short femur it may be that it’s not as important this early in a career and may be more something to worry about as the season wears on.

Overall, what I do see is a type of horse, one that has speed first and maybe stamina second with soundness not really being a factor. An interesting point to make here is that some traits are more prevalent than others and the fabled triple ideal just doesn’t show up. Perhaps having access to stats like conformation can be good and bad, good in that we can see a general pattern but bad in that there is probably more than one champion that has been deactivated due to poor soundness or a very average conformation and certainly more than one ‘triple ideal’ that has fetched far more than it is worth.

I guess the final question I would like to pose is this: What if these conformation traits aren’t driven by a type of horse but by a type of behavior? What I mean by that is that maybe, either by chat among players or by simply looking at stats we are driven by nature to go with what seems to be working. Thus, the high mid humerus angle may be driven not by a need to have a high mid angle but by the bigger players favoring that after looking at trending stats. The same with gelding and maybe a balanced rear triangle, is this the product of people following a trend rather than looking at the horses’ individual abilities?

I feel maybe it is a bit of both; there are definitely trends that ‘should’ be prevalent in a KYD winner but there it is also human nature to follow success and be swayed by trends.

Study Two

Index: Draw: The draw in the KYD, Call 1.2.3.4: The times for 4F, 6F, 1M and finish, Pos 1.2.3.4: The position of the relative horse according to each call

Moving on to the race itself we can see that it has been hugely influenced by the going and the pace of the race. Who can forget Royal Assembly’s win after a ridiculous half mile in 44 and 2 and a mile in 1.34 and 3 causing a Tsunami of closers to come from the clouds down the stretch or the way Extreme Jet powered home in the slop last year. I guess the thing that stands out for me is that the draw only matters depending on how the race is run so before the race it is probably impossible to say what a good draw is and which is a bad one. Nine of the twenty-two winners have come from the outside half and thirteen from the inside half which is incredibly even given the disadvantage a horse drawn in gate 20 would have over a horse drawn nearer the rail. In fact, gate 20 has the second-best win stat having won twice.

Whilst far from definitive there is one gate that has a remarkable record. Gate number 8 has won five of the twenty-two races making it a standout with nearly a 20%-win rate. I guess if there was one ball you would want drawn for your runner, it would be that one.

As far as positioning goes only six horses have won from worse than midfield at the first call, five of those six were still in that position as the second call but in each case, it was either down to an off track or very fast sectionals so it is easy to see where the trend goes as far as a normally run race on a dry track goes. This is where it sits in nicely with our synopsis from our conformation analysis that speed is important in winning a KYD.

Study 3

Index: 1st column: runs as a juvenile. 2nd column: wins as a juvenile. 3rd column BC result. 4th column: Total races at the end of their career (Please note that recent winners are still active and this number will change).

Our final list of stats looks at juvenile performance. The first thing we notice is that half of the runners competed in a BC Juvenile race and every horse ran at least three times as a two-year-old. The average amount of runs at two was around 6 with that being the most common number as well. With the exception of King Cobra every KYD winner broke their maiden as a juvenile and strangely the best performed BC runners as a group was in the BC juvenile Turf with two wins and a second against one win and three fourths in the BC Juvenile. I think the only thing that the BC Juvenile Turf wins prove is that the game or we as players has not yet shown any definition between turf and dirt certainly not until the horses are older and their preferences are more defined, (even then it seems a grey area).

In general, the KYD winners haven’t had long careers, possibly due to the rigors of the TC but also because I feel they have to be early types to get into the race.

On the whole it looks to me that in most cases ability is shown at two to a greater or lesser degree. They generally aren’t the best juveniles but have shown enough in both works and track performance to warrant the investment that a TC chase can take. There seems a slightly different approach to HRP racing versus real life because of the fact we do not have injuries here, although some of the more inexplicable performances look very much like we do. I feel as the game matures this emphasis we have on the TC will ease. There are clearly types that perform better in their early career and those that don’t and are more suited to the TC races. In some cases, this means that unsuitable horses are thrashed through their juvenile campaign and early three-year-old races in an attempt to get them into the KYD whereas these horses would greatly benefit from a different approach to their careers and targets that do not include the early rigors of a TC campaign.

I have often been asked which I feel is the best KYD winner so far although like most things it is really an impossible question to answer with so many variables. Probably the most influential Derby winner would have been Commanding, mainly because of his stud career but you would also have to bring Fusion into that equation. However without any colts winning in the last eleven years, it is hard to say that that influence is as comprehensive as it looks in breeding stats. The four that have come closest to the TC, Fuju Ninja, Howl To The Hound, Five Fives and Extreme Jet would all have to be in the mix for the GOAT as would those heartwarming wins from Cryptomagic, Quiet Return and Bad Debt so, as I said the question is truly an impossible conundrum. I guess a better question to ask would be who my favorite KYD winner is and that I could probably answer. A favorite winner might be one you backed, or owned, one you bred and got beaten a nose by. But a favorite holds a place in your heart not because it was the best but because it meant something for some reason. For that I can only say one horse, Cryptomagic from the late great Sanny Village. He wasn’t the best horse to win the KYD by a long way and after a good second in the Preakness was pretty unsuccessful, but it was more the fact that the player who won the biggest race was someone who loved the game and was a benchmark player for so many people. Sometimes it is not about the horse.

Finally, my apologies if I have offered any opinions that you don’t agree with. I don’t pretend to have the answers but now and again a good look at stats can give a different perspective on things. Draw your own conclusions from this information and don’t think that because you don’t have a three-year-old in the TC you have failed. There are plenty of great targets that can be won during a season and very often those races are won not by horses that have been struggling through a TC campaign but by those that have been brought along with more thought and patience.

Categories: EDITORIAL, FEATURED STORIES, Racing Information, TC 2026, THE TRIPLE CROWN