As 2025 draws to a close, Week 5 of the Rookie Rankings features a Top 10 that is largely unchanged from Week 4. But there is one small shift worth noting as the series wraps up.
The first Road to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve qualifier of 2026 is Saturday’s $150,000 Jerome Stakes at Aqueduct, which will be followed by the Smarty Jones Stakes at Oaklawn Park later that afternoon.
As 2025 comes to an end, this seems like a good time to look back at the past 12 months and reflect on the best races of the year. Here is a highly subjective list of the top 10 races of 2025, with the criteria being stretch battles, close finishes, and/or exceptional performances in important races at the top levels of competition. We hope you will enjoy plenty of good racing and wagering again in the year ahead. Good luck and happy new year!
Three prep races for the 2026 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve contested in two different countries promised to shake up Week 4 of the Rookie Rankings. But the impact was smaller than expected.
The two stateside qualifiers yielded intriguing results, but the winners weren’t quite strong enough to make the Top 10 cutoff.
Welcome to Kentucky Derby Prospect Profiles, where we take a look each week at a recent winner of a race on the Road to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve schedule offering qualifying points for the 1 ¼-mile Derby May 2, 2026, at Churchill Downs.
