Week In Review: Will Road to Louisville Once Again Run Through Florida?

03/30/2025 06:30 PM

If you want a historical prognosticator for success in the GI Kentucky Derby, you can't do much better than running well in the GI Florida Derby. The premier stakes for sophomores at Gulfstream Park has been around since 1952, and in 73 renewals, Florida Derby participants have gone on to win that year's Kentucky Derby 25 times-a better than 1-in-3 strike rate. For perspective, the next-most-productive preps are two far older races, the GI Champagne Stakes (which dates to 1867) and the GI Blue Grass Stakes (first run in 1911), which have yielded 23 Kentucky Derby winners each.

On 15 of those 25 occasions, the horse who won the Florida Derby also won the Kentucky Derby, and that trend bodes well for Tappan Street, a $1m FTSAUG colt by Into Mischief who not only has history on his side heading to Louisville, but positive momentum based on his no-nonsense, 1 1/4-length score on Saturday.

This Brad Cox trainee for the partnership of WinStar Farm, CHC, and Cold Press Racing always looked in it to win it at every point in the Florida Derby, and the confident, stalking ride by Luis Saez suggested that Tappan Street has enough tactical speed to carve out a forward-placed trip in a 20-horse field while being able to sustain his bid over 10 furlongs.

Bet down to the 2.4-1 second choice in the wagering, Tappan Street broke alertly from post nine, then conceded the lead four deep through the first turn. Saez opted for a sweet, in-the-clear spot about 3 1/2 lengths off the pacemakers down the backside, content to bide his time behind sensible opening quarter-mile splits of :23.37 and :23.85.

Advancing into third under hand-urging five-sixteenths out, Tappan Street gradually built momentum off the turn while zeroing in on the dueling duo of Madaket Road (Quality Road) and Neoequos (Neolithic) with the tempo waning through third- and fourth-quarter splits of :24.39 and :24.98.

Roused for run through the lane, Tappan Street came over the top at the eighth pole while encountering little resistance. Then, with Saez mindful of the onrushing 1.7-1 favorite Sovereignty (Into Mischief), Tappan Street extended fluidly into a higher gear that didn't appear to brush the uppermost range of the colt's power reserves. His last eighth, timed in an okay :12.66, added up to a 1:49.27 final clocking for nine furlongs.

You'd think that Gulfstream's mid-season decision to add 53 feet of run-up distance to nine-furlong dirt races (for a total of 123 feet of run-up) might have made for a faster Florida Derby this year, but that was not the case. The clocking came back more or less on par with recent editions.

Tappan Street's winning effort translated to a 94 winning Beyer Speed Figure, which is on the low side but not at all out of whack compared to the last six runnings of the Florida Derby (in order from 2024 back: 110, 95, 96, 94, 96 and 101).

That 101 winning Florida Derby figure in 2019 belonged to Maximum Security, who, because of a disqualification for a foul in that year's Kentucky Derby, does not appear on the historical list of winners of both the Florida and Kentucky Derbies.

But that colt did cross the finish wire first under the twin spires six springs ago, and it was jockey Saez who was aboard Maximum Security in both Florida and Kentucky.

What time frame now seems longer in Saez's mind-the 22 agonizing minutes that the Churchill Downs stewards required to adjudicate Maximum Security's controversial infraction on May 4, 2019, or the five Derbies since in which Saez has had four subsequent mounts but has come no closer than fourth, ninth, tenth and seventeenth?

But while the Florida/Kentucky Derby metric is in Saez's favor this season, Tappan Street will be advancing to the Kentucky Derby off only three lifetime races, which means he must overcome two other significant historical hurdles related to that lack of experience.

Prior to winning the Florida Derby, Tappan Street broke his maiden at first asking in a seven-eighths Gulfstream sprint Dec. 28 (a race yielded three next-out winners). He then came back to run a game second as the favorite in his first two-turn attempt, the Feb. 1 GIII Holy Bull Stakes.

Since 1937, only three horses have won the Derby going into the race with exactly three lifetime starts: Big Brown (2008), Justify (2018) and Mage (2023).

And between 2017 and 2024, horses with only two starts at age 3 prior to the Kentucky Derby are a collective 0-for-49.

However, that two-at-three template worked well over the previous decade, producing eight Derby winners between 2007 and 2016.

Pace puts the 'Hot' in Hot Springs…

Saturday's other Grade I, 1 1/8-miles prep stakes, the Arkansas Derby, also delivered intrigue. But the race could hardly be described as an artistic success, and the 2 1/4-length, deep-closing, stretch-swerving win by Sandman (Tapit) resonated as an artifact of a resounding pace meltdown.

How fast were 'TDN Rising Star' Cornucopian (Into Mischief) and Speed King (Volatile) zipping along on the front end under John Velazquez and Rafael Bejarano, respectively? For perspective, the first two quarter-mile splits of :22.46 and :22.75 were the quickest opening fractions in any nine-furlong, points-awarding Derby prep stakes in the past two years. At one point down the backstretch, the margin back to the main body of the field was at least 10 lengths.

As a result, once it collapsed, the intemperate duel between the 9-10 favorite and the 15-1 long shot resulted in the slowest third- and fourth-quarter splits (:25.16 and :26.74) of any nine-furlong Derby prep stakes in the past two years.

Put another way, when was the last time you saw an Equibase chart caller twice invoke the word “suicidal” (“suicidal duel, weakened” for Cornucopian's running-line comment and “suicidal duel, caved” for Speed King) in a Grade I stakes?

The blistering early half mile also stood out because Velazquez–long considered one of the country's most astute front-end riders–was the jockey who committed his inexperienced but heavily favored second-time-starter to such unsustainable early fractions.

“Nothing else you can say. We went fast,” the Hall-of-Fame jockey bluntly assessed after Cornucopian faded to fourth and Speed King straggled home sixth.

The prime beneficiary of that too-fast-to-last pace was the 3.7-1 Sandman for trainer Mark Casse and the partnership of D. J. Stable, St. Elias Stable, West Point Thoroughbreds and CJ Stables.

The $1.2-million OBSMAR gray had been coming up just shy with his late runs when second and third in two prior Oaklawn Park prep stakes at 1 1/16 miles. The added half-furlong and torrid tempo afforded jockey Jose Ortiz an ideal setup to showcase Sandman's closing kick.

Careening five wide into the lane, Sandman made quick work of blowing by the capitulating  leaders and then collaring the 3-1 second choice, Coal Battle (Coal Front), who had mustered first run into the meltdown.

Ortiz whipped Sandman once left-handed in mid-stretch, which caused the colt to veer sharply outward ahead of the only rival with a realistic chance to catch him, the seven-start maiden Publisher (American Pharoah).

Although the Oaklawn stewards looked at this incident after Sandman crossed the wire first, they determined that the winner was well clear and allowed the result to stand, sparing an already-odd edition of the Arkansas Derby from further chaos.

Sandman's closing furlong timed in :12.97 was the slowest among the six Derby prep stakes at nine furlongs that have been run so far in 2024-25.

However, Sandman's final time of 1:50.08 equated to a 99 Beyer, which is the fastest figure out of the Arkansas Derby since Omaha Beach ran a 101 in 2019 (previous five years 98, 94, 92, 92, 98 and 96 in reverse chronological order, including two divisions in 2020).

The post Week In Review: Will Road to Louisville Once Again Run Through Florida? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.