After Street Sense won the Breeders’ Cup juvenile by ten lengths yesterday, the talking heads on ESPN got to talking about why there has never been a winner of the Juvenile (for 2 year olds) that went on to win the Derby (for 3 year olds). 

One of the heads (can’t remember who) said it was because the BC Juvenile is more of a race for early bloomers and by next next year some of the horses that were not early bloomers will have caught up and the Derby was a totally different race as a result.

That suggestion is so wrong it makes me want to scream.  And people put in a position to educate the public on horse racing should do a better job.

The age of BC Juvenile is comparable to a high school athlete.  And just one year, in horse’s years, would make competitors in the Derby approximately equivalent to a college athlete.  Older horses, as in the Breeders’ Cup Classic would be professional athletes, to continue the analogy.  So if the talking head’s explaination were accurate, it would say that a stars in high school are able to stand out amongst their peers but they become fairly rank and file by the time they get to college. 

But we know this is not true.  Even if you change the age groups around to a baseball analogy and say it is like little league, pony league and college level, it still doesn’t make sense.  Ringers that emerge while very young not only can continue to shine at the next level, but they usually still shine at the next level. 

If true, the ESPN announcer’s theory would say that LeBron James would be rank and file in college and the pros.  It would say that Michelle Wie will be a fairly ordinary golfer once she gives some other golfers time to catch up (a year in horse terms).

The ESPN head’s explaination is just plain silly.

All he would have to do to come up with a better explaination is to simply looks at recent facts.  Horses running well in the BC Juvenile have a great history of running well in the Derby.  Point Given runs a hard charging second in the Juvenile, fifth in the Derby and then sweeps the rest of his three year old Grade I races.  Afleet Alex runs second in the Juvenile, third in the Derby and then sweeps the rest of his three year old season. 

These results indicate that, in fact, it is not an entirely different game by the time the Derby comes around.  It is to some extent the same peer group, with some of the same stars.

So why does the curse exist?

It doesn’t exist.  Like so many things in horse racing, people often assign irrational explainations to their observations. This is how superstition is born.  To the casual observer, if a horse wins the Juvenile, he should go on and win the Derby, right?  Why not, huh? 

The fact of the matter is that the best horse does not always win each race.  It is the best horse plus the best ride that wins the race.  The BC Juvenile and the Kentucky Derby draw huge fields of talented horses.  Even if they ran the two races on consecutive weekends you should not expect the same horse to win both races.  The fact that six months pass between the two races does allow some additional development, but it also allows for injury and other random events that can take one horse off the Derby trail and put another on.

There is every reason for horses that run well in their two year old season to run well in their three year old season.  But there is no reason to expect that the Juvenile winner should win the Derby also.  It will happen eventually, just as stars align.  But in the mean time we should not spend a lot of time building silly theories on why it hasn’t happened yet.  It just hasn’t happened yet and that is all there is to observe.