There is an old saying in show business about being only as good as your last gig. Can Concert Tour put on another show on the Road to the Kentucky Derby? Can the unbeaten colt continue to satisfy increasingly expectant audiences?
The G1 Arkansas Derby is the final stage for Classic aspirants to showcase their talents ahead of the May 1 extravaganza. Concert Tour looked every inch a star performer when running away with the G2 Rebel Stakes on the same Oaklawn Park stage, but he has set the bar high for himself and everyone knows his playbook. If he tries for an encore from the front, will his rivals oblige him again? Or is there a bigger threat waiting in the wings?
Concert Tour’s performance last time was unambiguous. Call it a Rebel without a clause, for once he took the lead from the free-running Caddo River early on, victory could be gained without conditions.
Surprisingly, Caddo River was made favourite to beat G2 San Vicente winner Concert Tour last time, having won a listed race over a mile in 1:38.19. On the face of it, Concert Tour running the first mile of the Rebel in 1:36.65 had his market rival cooked, but there was more to their encounter than this coarse comparison suggests.
The capacious Caddo River broke in a bit of a tangle from his rail draw and jockey Florent Geroux had to drive him forward to avoid being swamped by outside pressure. This is the plight of many a horse in the inside stall on dirt.
Meanwhile, Concert Tour hit the lids out wide. If you pause the video below at the 1:55 mark, it is clear at this point 50 yards from the start that the pink silks of Concert Tour has position on his foe. Then, the brilliant Joel Rosario sits down in the saddle and match-races his rival to the first turn.
In the process, Rosario completely outrode the more passive Florent Geroux (on Caddo River), who meekly ceded the lead while pulling back on the reins. Dropping into the backwash of Concert Tour, Caddo River was too fired up, having first being asked for a run and then denied his head. He was never on an even keel afterwards.
Now, such was the dominance that Concert Tour exhibited as he powered clear turning for home and careered over the line that it could easily be that he would hammer Caddo River every day of the week. As fate would have it, though, Caddo River (stall 2) has drawn inside Concert Tour (stall 5) again this time. Surely Geroux will have learned from what went wrong?
A trial that has stood the test of time
The 11 runnings of the Arkansas Derby in the TRC Global Rankings decade (last year’s race was run in two divisions) have produced performances that have impressed our computer:
Indeed, we make the Par figure (the average rating of the winner) the same as for last week’s G1 Santa Anita Derby, so these two are clearly the most important Derby trials of the modern era. Note that trainer Bob Baffert has won four of these 11 contests and could easily make it a nap hand since 2011 here.
But the Par figure was cited for a reason. Last week, we noted how Concert Tour’s stablemate, Medina Spirit, had the best form before the Santa Anita Derby, but TRC Computer Race Ratings had not awarded him a figure close to the 120 required of an average winner. That wasn’t to say he could not reach the standard, but it reflected that these 3-year-olds have to keep improving to reach the level required of successively tougher races at this time of year.
Now, if we look at the ratings achieved by the 2021 Arkansas Derby field, a similar caveat seems to apply to Concert Tour in this spot – but there is a difference in his case and Medina Spirit’s.
We have Concert Tour (115) on top of Super Stock (113) and Get Her Number (112). Racing Post Ratings – which used to power our rankings until we developed our own numbers – has Get Her Number (114), Concert Tour (112) and Super Stock (106) as their top three, before adjusting for weight, which we don’t do. The Oaklawn Park Morning Line compiler goes Concert Tour (evens), Hozier (3/1) and Caddo River (7/2).
We said that Concert Tour’s case to reach the Arkansas Derby standard of 120 was different from eventual second Medina Spirit’s in the Santa Anita Derby for two reasons. Firstly, the former’s last-out figure of 115 was gained comfortably and with authority, suggesting he could be better than we are able to rate him. Secondly, he is unbeaten and we tend to find, for obvious reasons, that unbeaten horses usually end up rating higher than their best figure to date.
A word about our other figures. Super Stock is an interesting horse. We awarded him a lofty 113 for finishing third to Essential Quality and Keepmeinmind in the G1 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland last October. He was clear of the rest there, and the winner and runner-up have advertised the form since with four wins between them. This underlines the way that TRC Computer Race Ratings and indeed TRC Global Rankings work: We base our hierarchy in each category on inferences drawn from a giant network of relationships forged by the results of Group and Graded races round the world, so every rating and ranking is connected to every other.
If you watch the Rebel Stakes video closely, Super Stock had nowhere to run throughout. As a result, he did not come close to matching his best figure. However, he doesn’t just need to reproduce that 113 here but to improve on it too and, as the graphic above shows, he has had more chances to show what he can do than his rivals.
Why don’t we rate the Rebel runner-up Hozier as highly as the Morning Line compiler? Just because we can’t. He was less than a length ahead of third-placed Big Lake and we have nothing on which to base a higher rating of either yet. It could be that the oddsmaker has got it spot on, especially as Hozier is trained by a certain Bob Baffert, but he wasn’t competitive in the Rebel and we need to see more.
Get Her Number, the top-rated RPR horse, had a wide trip in the Rebel and could do better this time. He is a G1 winner, but that came in a substandard renewal of the American Pharoah Stakes at Santa Anita in September, and nothing we have seen from the placed horses Rombauer (modest third to Essential Quality in the G2 Blue Grass most recently) and Spielberg otherwise support a bigger figure than 112.
No, it’s Caddo River who is the interesting one here. Allowed to run more evenly, he could reveal the potential that encouraged his backers to make him favourite over Concert Tour last up, and at the very least he should ensure a tougher trip for that rival.
The standings
