Day: June 5, 2019

On Saturday is the last leg of the triple crown, the Belmont Stakes, run at 1 1/2 mi. on the dirt for three-year olds with a purse of $1.5 million. The race features Preakness winner, War of Will, from the Mark Casse barn, Wood Memorial winner and 3rd place finisher in the Kentucky Derby, Tacitus, second place finisher in the Peter Pan, Sir Winston, and Preakness runner-up, Everfast. If people thought that this race would be a cake-walk for War of Will after his Preakness win, they would be mistaken, because the data indicates otherwise. After excluding Joevia from the calculations temporarily because of high variances with the horse’s E1 and E2 figures from two outliers, the race comes down to between War of Will, Sir Winston and Tacitus. War of Will has a slight edge overall because of his best-in-the-field winning percentage at 28.2% with low risk, while Sir Winston and Tacitus have edges in speed, reflected in their final speed estimates of 40.3% and 34%. Sir Winston is an interesting choice, in view of the fact that much of horse’s 101 final speed rating in the last race (the highest among last starts) was due to a high late pace figure of 114, boosting the horse’s late speed estimate to 32.4%. That factors well with the distance of this race at 1 1/2 mi. Along with Sir Winston and Tacitus, Joevia does have a fair amount of speed with a 20% final speed estimate, which is a truer figure than his inflated component estimates. According to this metric, the horse deserves a little respect when he is not getting any from his 30-1 M/L, which compares to his winning percentage of 3.9%. If you run the model and exclude component estimates (0.6 SPD, 0.4 WP), Joevia, ranks ahead of War of Will, though behind Tacitus and Sir Winston. Two other horses with the potential to surprise are Master Fencer, who’s late running ability was on par with Maximum Security’s down the stretch in the Kentucky Derby and Tax, who has shown speed in his previous races despite his poor showing in the Kentucky Derby, which could be excused for the wet track. In sum, the top selections are War of Will, Sir Winston and Tacitus, with Joevia figuring third or fourth.