Two important trials for the 2021 G1 Kentucky Derby on May 1 take place this Saturday. In the East, the true talent of the local hero will have to be realised, but, in the West, the best horse around will be represented only in Spirit.
Essential Quality is the first horse. His Classic candidacy will be tested in the G2 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, and he will have to win to retain the leading TRC Global Ranking of his generation.
The second horse is Life Is Good. Injury has forced him from the Derby trail and he won’t be running in the G1 Santa Anita Derby, but he sends sentinels from the G2 San Felipe in the shape of the four horses to have chased him home, headed by his Bob Baffert stablemate Medina Spirit.
Victory for any of these may not presage a subsequent strike at Churchill Downs, but it will remind us of the kind of horse we are missing in the shape of their conqueror.
G2 BLUE GRASS STAKES (Keeneland, 9f, dirt)
First to Keeneland. The TRC Computer Race Ratings for the Blue Grass look like this:
The figure in the shaded column is the best rating the horse has earned, on the same scale as the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Ratings. When we come to rank horses globally, it isn’t just the best rating a horse has earned but all its ratings that count.
Essential Quality occupies a similar rank to that which the Japanese phenom Contrail had this time last year – he is the world’s highest-ranked 3-year-old on our figures. This is because his unbeaten record has been achieved against horses who themselves have beaten a high percentage of their opponents.
It turns out that, if you rank horses in this way, the web of influence spreads out enough across the world so that even runners from the far corners can be compared. And our computer knows how to tune the system by using the history of subsequent races as a benchmark.
As young horses like Essential Quality build a portfolio, they have to keep getting better. We will see further down that this is particularly true in the case of Santa Anita Derby aspirants, but here we have a rare case of a 3-year-old who, in all probability, doesn’t need to get better in order to win – if historical precedents in the Blue Grass hold good. For, take a look at the ratings achieved by the last ten winners in this spot:
Only two horses – Carpe Diem in 2015 (won by 6¼ lengths) and Vekoma two years ago (won by 3½ lengths) – have produced a figure in excess of Essential Quality’s two TRC 119s.
We don’t use the name of a race or even its Grade to help determine the ratings of the horses who compete, but notice that the average TRC rating of the winner (117) is the same before and after the race’s demotion to Grade 2 status in 2017. Yet the standard has improved since the Keeneland surface was returned to dirt in Carpe Diem’s year. This is probably a function of popularity among trainers with a good horse: Run on the same surface as Churchill Downs, the Blue Grass naturally owns a greater capacity to serve as an analogue for the experience to come.
We don’t expect Essential Quality to lose. In addition to an edge in class, he has home-court advantage, in effect. It was at Keeneland that he won the G1 Breeders’ Futurity and the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last autumn. On both occasions his opponent here, Keepmeinmind, was readily subdued, into second on the first occasion (TRC 110) and third (TRC 114) on the second.
To prove what we mean about our ratings been constructed as a hierarchy, Keepmeinmind advertised the form when winning the G2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes subsequently (TRC 113). But this likeable, stone-cold closer wasn’t at his best on his reappearance at Oaklawn, running only sixth in the G2 Rebel Stakes.
Hidden Stash is worthy of respect for a minor award. He earned TRC 112 when runner-up in the increasingly influential G2 Tampa Bay Derby. We have that as a sharply improved effort over his third in the G3 Sam F Davis Stakes (TRC 104) and he seemed to benefit from the longer, nine-furlong trip. Incidentally, he is another good horse by Tiz The Law’s sire, Constitution, who sits at #13 in our Dirt Sires’ world rankings.
G1 SANTA ANITA DERBY (Santa Anita, 9f, dirt)
Later in the day, Santa Anita stages a much more confusing affair than the Blue Grass should be. Favourite on the Morning Line is the Bob Baffert-trained Medina Spirit, who TRC Computer Race Ratings has running to a performance rating of 113 twice. On the same scale, however, Racing Post Ratings (RPR) has awarded the colt two 99s.
Note that we used to employ RPR to power our rankings but were motivated to develop our own figures, which have been published for the first time this year. They are available as a click-through from our main ratings tables, such as these for Medina Spirit:
The G1 Santa Anita Derby has proved by far the best Kentucky Derby trial in recent history. We tend to think this isn’t a great renewal of this G1, and it seems Medina Spirt needs to improve to win. Here is what it takes to win the Santa Anita Derby on the TRC scale of racehorse merit:
There have been some outstanding, world-class performances in this race. California Chrome won it by 5¼ lengths in 2014, while Justify scored by 3 lengths and 6½ lengths in 2018. Other versions were not so good, typified by Midnight Interlude’s win in 2011 (TRC 110) which did not work out.
Of course, the horse who could have emulated those titans is absent. Life Is Good, also trained by Baffert, has impressed every step of the way on the Derby trail but has been knocked from contention by a hind-leg injury sustained in a workout subsequent to his G2 San Felipe romp. Representing him here are the next four finishers, Medina Spirit, Dream Shake, Roman Centurian and The Great One. All need to step up, as the table of ratings here shows clearly:
It might help to review the San Felipe (see video below), concentrating on the backwash after Life Is Good. They broke cleanly enough from the stalls and the winner smashed the race up, providing no real excuses for those behind. When you watch the replay, there seems no reason to doubt that Medina Spirit was the best of the vanquished. Indeed, he sems a likeable and notably genuine horse who really sticks to the task. But is he good enough?
When you couple the historical par for the race, the level of form the horses with exposed ability have shown and the number of lightly raced horses in opposition, such as Rock Your World, Defunded, Law Professor and Ottothelegend, it all seems a bit of a puzzle.
Certainly, Rock Your World looked the part when winning a listed race at Santa Anita by 2¼ lengths, while Baffert’s Defunded seemed like he could be any kind of horse when winning a maiden at the same track from off the pace. But we could not seriously put them up to reach Santa Anita Derby standard from what we know.
Maybe this isn’t a good year for the race. Maybe a superstar will reveal himself. Medina Spirit will know a lot more than most in the finish here and that could prove decisive. However, it seems like we will find out more than we already know here.