BloodHorse.com experiences a predictable and understandable bump in traffic in the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby.* This year, fans would need to set aside a whole day to see all of the content available on the Web site. I've mentioned my friend Jason Shandler's Triple Crown Talk blog and the Triple Crown Mania home page before; now I want to point out a couple of brand new, can't-miss features.
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Derby 134 Contenders: Pedigree Profiles is a free download that gives pedigree fans (pedigree fans ... pedigree fans ... that's why you're here, right?!?) something to do for the next few hours. It brings together, in one "white paper" document, expert pedigree analysis (by Alan Porter and Avalyn Hunter) for each of the 20 horses in the race. As it says in my headline, one of these horses is
guaranteed to win!
Some of my responsibilities here at The Blood-Horse are to edit pedigree analysis articles, prepare statistics for research studies, and validate the data that we publish in a multitude of print and electronic offerings. Not surprisingly, the references and databases available here are about the most inclusive archives of Thoroughbred breeding and racing anywhere.
In other words, I get paid to play with all the fun stuff.
And the other feature that I'd like to hype today includes a lot of fun stuff. I enjoyed fact-checking this one!
And since we're on the subject of horses in the big race, I'll share my picks:
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Anak Nakal (
pedigree). I discussed him briefly in my Big Brown post (
here). At the time, he was iffy on even being in the field of 20. I worry about his ability to run in company and to get the distance, but any horse with multiple crosses of Dr. Fager is fine by me!
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Colonel John (
pedigree). His sire Tiznow (
on SRO) is going to be one of the biggest pedigree influences for the next 25 years. And Turkoman as a broodmare sire is a force to be reckoned with.
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Big Brown (
pedigree). I explained why I like his pedigree in
my earlier post. I'm going to back off slightly now that he's in post 20. A few more feet and he'd be off the Churchill Downs property.
You won't want to bet on them, though -- my handicapping skills are ... um ... a bit ahead of their time. Which is to say, I tend to bet on horses that lose horribly when I have money on them, but who then go on to win all their future races when I'm not in on the action. Go figure.
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* I started to type "Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I)" out of habit. I've been doing a lot of editing recently....
