The Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve is a race unlike any other, and for handicappers this is especially true. The prestigious race is conducted over 1 ¼ miles, a distance that few – if any – of the entrants will have tackled in the past. For most, their longest race will have been 1 1/8 miles, an eighth of a mile shorter than the Kentucky Derby.

As a result, many handicappers approach the Derby with a different mindset than they would have for an ordinary race, and one of the factors they choose to emphasize is how fast each contender ran the last three-eighths of a mile in their final prep race. Analyzing such fractional times has become a popular tool for handicapping the Kentucky Derby, and for a good reason – horses that are finishing strongly at the end of their prep races are more likely to handle the distance of the Kentucky Derby than horses that are tiring at the end of their prep races.

Generally, a final three-eighths time of less than 38 seconds is considered good, while anything over 39 seconds is quite slow. Of course, these times can be affected by a variety of factors, including the speed of the racetrack and the early pace of the race (it’s easier to finish fast if you’ve gone very slow early on), but the fact remains that each of the last seven Kentucky Derby winners – and 17 of the last 21 – ran the last three-eighths of a mile of their final Derby prep race in less than 38 seconds, indicating that analyzing these fractional times can be very useful for handicapping the Kentucky Derby.

In years past, calculating such fractions required using rough rules-of-thumb, since final times and fractional splits were only published for the leader at each point of a race. This is still the case at some tracks, but for tracks that have installed the advanced race-timing technology Trakus, we can now access precise times for every horse in a race, making our task easier and much more accurate.

Below is a chart ranking the top 25 Kentucky Derby contenders in order of how fast they finished in their final prep race. Before diving into the data, here are a few things to keep in mind…

1. Trakus is not installed at Turfway Park, Fair Grounds, Sunland Park, or Oaklawn Park – the host tracks for the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks, Grade 2 Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby, the Grade 3 Sunland Park Derby, and Grade 1 Arkansas Derby – so I have calculated the final times and last three-eighths fractions from those races using the estimation that six lengths is equal to one second, which is considered more precise than the traditional rule-of-thumb that five lengths is equal to one second. As a result, the times I have listed for horses that ran at these tracks are not quite as accurate as the Trakus fractions, but they should be close.
2. Since some tracks have a traditional timer in addition to Trakus, the times provided by Trakus can vary slightly from the times officially published in result charts. Whenever possible, I have used data from Trakus for my chart.
3. Fractional times for the Group 2 United Arab Emirates Derby Presented by Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Group are based on metric distances, which are slightly shorter than “equivalent” distances measured in yards. To make these times comparable to the other times on the list, I have converted them to projected times based on yards.
4. Anothertwistafate and Country House appear on this list twice because they have contested multiple 1 1/8-mile Kentucky Derby prep races this year.
5. Please note that Anothertwistafate and Sueno used the Grade 3 Stonestreet Lexington Stakes going 1 1/16 miles as their final prep race; their finishing fractions for this shorter race have not been included in the chart. 

One of the big storylines this year has been the relative speed of the racetracks over which major Kentucky Derby prep races have been run, which naturally has an impact on how fast horses can run the final three-eighths of a mile. Consider the Xpressbet Florida Derby, which produced four of the five fastest fractions in the chart, including an other-worldly :35.96 from Maximum Security. That’s impressive, but the Florida Derby was held over a very fast track and the early pace was slow, allowing the whole field to finish strongly in the last third of the race.

Maximum Security (Bob Coglianese/Gulfstream Park)

The Sunland Park Derby was also run over a blazingly fast track, as evidenced by the spectacular winning time of 1:46.94. That’s quite a contrast to the Santa Anita Derby at Santa Anita Park, a track that has been playing unusually slow since racing returned from a brief hiatus in March. Under the circumstances, Roadster’s time of :38.27 for the final three-eighths of a mile in the Santa Anita Derby is more impressive than it appears based off the raw time.

But hey, 17 of the last 21 Derby winners managed to finish in under :38 seconds regardless of circumstances, and putting caveats aside, there are some impressive times on this chart. Anothertwistafate will need a few defections to secure a spot in the Derby field, but he could be a live longshot after coming home in :36.60 and :37.10 in his two 1 1/8-mile prep races this year. Meanwhile, Omaha Beach and Improbable deserve a lot of credit for finishing in :37.45 in the Arkansas Derby. That’s a solid fraction, especially when you consider that the Arkansas Derby featured an honest early pace and was conducted over a normal track (not particularly fast or slow, even after a lot of rain).

Other races were a bit less than encouraging. The Wood Memorial Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets and the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes, particularly the latter, featured unimpressive finishing fractions for the most part. The same goes for the UAE Derby, and while some might be tempted to chalk that up to a slow racing surface at Meydan Racecourse, the UAE Derby has actually produced respectable finishing fractions over the last few years, and the times posted by Plus Que Parfait and Gray Magician are slow by comparison.

Ultimately, my main takeaways from analyzing all this data are as follows:

1. Maximum Security’s :35.96 is spectacular – no Derby contender has finished faster since we started compiling this data for America’s Best Racing in 2016. He did receive a highly beneficial pace setup, and some handicappers will dismiss him because of this, but I think that could be unwise. It’s possible that Maximum Security is simply a special horse.
2. If there’s one horse that I’m tempted to forgive for coming home in over :38 seconds, it’s Roadster, who didn’t miss the mark by much while racing over a very slow track at Santa Anita.
3. The fraction that impresses me the most overall is the :37.45 posted by Omaha Beach, because he was part of an honest pace over a normal track. All of the Derby contenders who finished faster than Omaha Beach did so with the aid of a slow early pace and/or a significantly faster-than-normal racetrack.

Good luck with your handicapping!